ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Syria on Wednesday condemned "in the strongest terms" an unauthorized visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Mount Hermon in occupied Syrian territory, with the premier vowing not to allow "any terrorist army to establish itself on our border."

Mount Hermon (Jabal al-Shaykh) in Syria's Quneitra province, which contains areas that have been occupied by Israeli troops since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government in December 2024, when the Netanyahu government ordered Israeli forces to seize the 1974 buffer zone in the Golan Heights, separating the two states, amid the post-revolutionary confusion.

With the new Syrian government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa having enjoyed intimate ties with Ankara, the country has emerged as a key strategic confrontation zone for Turkey and Israel, two growing regional powers.

"We will not allow any terrorist army to establish itself on our border," said Netanyahu on Wednesday, sporting a tactical vest while speaking on Syrian land.

"The Syrian Arab Republic condemns in the strongest terms the illegal entry of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into Syrian territory and his tour of Mount Hermon, a provocative act and a flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and international law," the Syrian foreign ministry said in response.

"Continued Israeli incursions and attacks inside Syrian territory constitute a dangerous escalation that threatens security and stability in the region."

The Israeli premier was accompanied by Defense Minister Israel Katz, who said: "We are here sending a very strong and clear message to the President of Syria, who sits 35 kilometers away down there in his palace in Damascus: we are here on Mount Hermon, we are in the security zone, and we are not moving from here."

SIince the ouster of Assad, Israel has repeatedly launched airstrikes and ground incursions in the country, most with the nominal aim to protect the Druze minority in the country's south and areas of Damascus from a wave of sectarian clashes in the summer of 2025.

There is a substantial Druze community in Israel that called on the Netanyahu government to intervene on behalf of their religious kin in neighboring Syria.

However, Israeli forces bombed a Syrian airbase in Idlib on August 18 with the alleged motivation of preventing the deployment of Turkish troops at the site, a claim that Ankara vehemently dismissed as "frivilous".

US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack denounced the strikes as an "unnecessary escalation," asserting that "the [Syrian] government has neither adopted a predatory posture nor maintained proxy forces. It has, in fact, repeatedly indicated a preference for de-escalation with Israel."

"The Syrian Arab Republic holds the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the repercussions of these violations and calls upon the United Nations, international organizations, and influential countries to assume their responsibilities to stop these attacks and return to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement," the Syrian foreign ministry statement concluded.