ALBAWABA - Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, told U.S. Defense Minister Pete Hegseth that Israel is planning to keep its forces inside their ‘security zones’ in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.
Katz’s statement comes just days after U.S. President Donald Trump asked Israel to withdraw its forces from said ‘security zones’, telling Netanyahu that Israeli troop deployment was fueling tensions in the region, saying: "They don't want you there. You should redeploy," according to Axios.
Katz further “emphasized Israel's determination to remain in the security zones in Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon in order to protect Israel's borders and the communities near the border from the threats posed by jihadist forces.
“We have never asked the United States to act in our place along our borders,” he said.
In Syria, Israel sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, carrying out repeated incursions into Syria territory since then, claiming it was pursuing a ‘demilitarized zone’ in the southern Syrian border - which already existed as part of the UN peace treaty between the countries in 1974.
In Lebanon, Israeli forces are still actively deployed in a ‘security zone’ 10 kilometers into Lebanese territory.
In Gaza, the IDF occupies 60 percent of the territory and is present on the outside perimeter along the borders with Israel and Egypt.
