A new Israeli plan to invest $334 million in expanding settlements in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights marks a major escalation in a broader pattern of territorial expansion – on land the United Nations still regards as Syrian.
The five-year project, approved on 17 April, would bring some 3,000 new Israeli families to the territory and expand the Katzrin settlement into what Israeli officials describe as the Golan’s “first city” – with housing, infrastructure, public services, university facilities and specialised medical centres.
