ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Syria on Wednesday thanked the countries that voted in favor of a UN resolution adopted a day earlier, which deemed Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights illegal, demanding its withdrawal to the 1967 line. 

In a statement, the Syrian foreign ministry hailed “the increase in the number of countries voting in favor of the resolution, from 97 last year to 123 this year,” saying it “unequivocally demonstrates the significant support for the new Syria and its principled national stance adhering to the occupied Syrian Golan.” 

The Egypt-initiated resolution received 123 votes in favor, seven against, and 41 abstentions. 

“The Assembly declared that Israel’s 14 December 1981 decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan is null and void and called for its rescission,” the UN said in a statement.

“It [the Assembly] also demanded that Israel withdraw from the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of 4 June 1967,” it added.

In June 1967, Israel emerged victorious in a war against Arab states, named the Six-Day War, seizing the West Bank, including East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.

Since the new authorities in Damascus toppled Bashar al-Assad in December last year, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli forces to complete the takeover of the 1974 buffer zone in the Golan Heights, separating the two states, claiming that the 1974 Disengagement Agreement was void until order was restored in Syria.

Israel has repeatedly launched attacks against Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, nominally to destroy weapons caches and protect the minority Druze community that has been the target of sectarian massacres at the hands of Damascus-affiliated armed forces.

On Friday, an Israeli operation in southern Syria’s Beit Jinn town, the deadliest in Syrian territory since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, killed at least 13 and injured 24. The Israeli troops, who also sustained injuries, were forced to withdraw after local resistance. 

Syria’s foreign ministry strongly condemned the operation as a “full-fledged war crime,” stating the Israeli forces bombed the area “in a deliberate and brutal manner” after failing to advance, forcing large numbers of families to flee as shelling continued on residential homes.