The US State Department defended the Israeli military’s push into Syria amid questioning on whether the occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights was a violation of international law.

Spokesman Matthew Miller insisted at his Monday daily briefing in Washington that Israel’s military was undertaking an operation in self-defense to prevent militant groups from occupying regions along the border which could be used to launch offensives into its territory.

He also claimed that the occupation of five Syrian villages across the Golan Heights was temporary, and would not amount to a permanent expansion of Israeli territory.

Parts of the Golan Heights were annexed by Israel in 1981 after being taken in the Six-Day War and have long been recognized internationally as illegally occupied territory.

Miller, like Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, portrayed the occupation as necessary due to the abandonment of military posts in the region by regime forces aligned with Bashar Al-Assad, the ousted dictator of Syria. It still isn’t clear if the US or Israel have specific intelligence indicating that militants aligned with the Islamic State or Al Qaeda were threatening Israeli positions near the areas now under occupation.

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”The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area around the negotiated Israeli-Syrian buffer zone, which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations that would threaten the State of Israel, would threaten civilians inside Israel,” said Miller, notably not giving any evidence of those groups having attempted to move in.

“Every country has the right to take action against terrorist organizations, and every country, I think, would be worried about a possible vacuum that could be filled by terrorist organizations, especially in volatile times as we obviously are in right now in Syria,” he continued.

Notably, US officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others at the White House have warned of a possible resurgence of fighters aligned with the Islamic State in Syria coinciding with the downfall of Assad. The US conducted strikes on at least 75 targets thought to be IS-affiliated over Sunday, according to a senior White House official.

Separate reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based human rights organization, indicated on Monday that Israeli forces targeted numerous military sites and potentially other targets across Syria for strikes.

The statements left open the possibility that Israel could seek to occupy the five villages — Ofaniya, Quneitra, al-Hamidiyah, Samdaniya al-Gharbiyya and al-Qahtaniyah — indefinitely, or at the very least until the establishment of a government in Syria with at least tacit support from the Israeli government. Importantly, the occupation comes just weeks before Donald Trump, a top ally of Benjamin Netanyahu known to be largely deferential to his Israeli counterpart, is set to take office.

Miller would go on to say that “this is a temporary action that they have taken in response to actions by the Syrian military to withdraw from that area” while adding that the Biden administration, which has a little more than a month left in office, would be “watching what steps [Israel] take[s] in the coming weeks”.

Marco Rubio is almost certain to take over for Antony Blinken at the State Department and is expected to face one of the cleanest Senate confirmations of any of Donald Trump’s nominees.

Rubio, like Trump, is a vocal supporter of Israel and is an opponent of the establishment of a Palestinian state, something the Biden administration and US allies in the Middle East have argued is necessary for ending the conflict in Gaza.

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Israel calls Syria its fourth front after rushing troops to the Golan

Israeli tanks gather along the Israeli-Lebanese border. The Israeli army has deployed additional forces on the border with Syria as rebel advances continue across the country. The IDF said on the Telegram platform that it was deploying additional defense forces in the Golan Heights and along the border. This is the second announcement of its kind within 24 hours. 

Israeli troops are now engaged on "four fronts" as a result of new operations on the border of Syria and the Golan Heights, Israeli military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said on Sunday.

Halevi's comments to newly enlisted recruits came after Israel deployed soldiers into a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad's regime by Islamist rebels.

Israeli forces on Sunday also took over the Syrian side of Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights.

Israel seized the area from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War. The capture was never internationally recognized, apart from the United States.

"Ground troops are engaged in combat on four fronts: against terrorism in Judea and Samaria, in Gaza, in Lebanon, and last night we deployed troops into Syrian territory," Halevi said.

Judea and Samaria are the Israeli names for the occupied West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier that troops were ordered to be positioned "in the buffer zone and several other places necessary for defence."

"We will not allow any hostile force to position itself on our border," he said. At the same time, he reiterated that Israel was interested in having "good neighbourly relations" with Syria.

As it has frequently in recent months, Israel mounted a series of airstrikes in Syria on Sunday, including the capital Damascus, a monitoring group reported.

Israeli warplanes targeted military depots in the vicinity of a scientific centre near Damascus and an army outpost in the countryside of the capital, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Israeli Air Force had earlier attacked a chemical weapons factory in Syria according to media reports. The Jerusalem Post reported that the attack was motivated by concerns that weapons developed during the reign of al-Assad could fall into the hands of rebels.

The Israeli TV channel N12 had also reported on the strike earlier. An Israeli army spokesman declined to comment on the reports.

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