Netanyahu declares ‘absolute control' from Mount Hermon as Jordan works the southern file in Damascus

Benjamin Netanyahu travelled on Wednesday to Israeli military positions on the summit of Mount Hermon inside Syrian territory, accompanied by Defence Minister Israel Katz and Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Tamir Yadai, and was briefed at an IDF post overlooking Syria by Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo and the commander of the 210th Division. The photographs and text came from the Prime Minister’s Spokesperson’s Office and were carried by i24NEWS, Israel National News, The Jerusalem Post and Al Bawaba: this was a distributed event, not a leak. In the fullest version of his remarks, via Israel National News, Netanyahu said: “We control the entire area from the summit of Mount Hermon to the Yarmouk, and from here to the Mediterranean Sea — absolute control unlike anything we have had before. We will not allow any terror army to establish itself on our border, and this is one of the tremendous achievements we have secured in the War of Revival.”

That sentence is a claim of operational reach, not of territory held to the coast, and should not be read as the latter. Al Bawaba alone reports that Netanyahu addressed President Ahmed al-Sharaa directly, saying Israel would not leave Mount Hermon as long as it perceived jihadist threats from Syrian soil; the i24, Israel National News and Jerusalem Post accounts do not carry that formulation, and it stands on one outlet. Syria’s foreign ministry responded the same day, calling the visit a “provocative step and a flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and international law,” describing continued incursions as a dangerous escalation, holding “the Israeli occupation” fully responsible and demanding a return to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement, according to Enab Baladi’s English service.

Hours earlier and a hundred-odd kilometres north, Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi was received in Damascus by Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani and then by Sharaa. SANA said the talks covered bilateral relations, developments in southern Syria, preparations for the third session of the Higher Coordination Council in Damascus in October, and progress on the tripartite Syria–Jordan–United States roadmap for Sweida. The Syrian Observer notes it was Safadi’s second Damascus visit this year and followed Shaibani’s talks in Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and US envoy Thomas Barrack. The roadmap was signed in Damascus on 16 September 2025 by Safadi, Shaibani and Barrack. Its terms, as set out by the Doha Institute, included deploying forces along the Damascus–Suwayda road and forming a local police force under an Interior Ministry appointee.

Assessment: The two tracks in Wednesday’s file move in opposite directions and are not really in competition. Israel is consolidating a position it describes as permanent and advertising it on a religious holiday; Damascus is answering with paper — statements, councils, an October summit. Foreign Policy reported in July that the Suwayda talks had stalled, with state symbols largely gone from the province and security in the hands of Druze factions rather than Damascus; Hikmat al-Hijri’s declaration that “we are pursuing independence” dates from that same month, not this week. Treat the anniversary language accordingly. Watch whether the Petra and SANA texts of the joint statement actually name Israel, as one Arabic outlet’s headline asserts.