The Israeli government on Sunday approved a plan to double the population of the occupied and annexed Golan Heights, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the prime minister’s office said.

The government had “unanimously approved” the 40 million shekel ($11 million) “plan for the demographic development of the Golan … in light of the war and the new front in Syria and the desire to double the population”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.

Israel has occupied most of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau, since 1967 and annexed that area in 1981 in a move recognised only by the United States.

Netanyahu said, “The strengthening of the Golan is that of the State of Israel and it is particularly important at this time. We will continue to establish ourselves there, develop it and settle there”.

The occupied Golan Heights are home to about 23,000 Druze Arabs, whose presence predates the occupation and most of whom retain Syrian citizenship, as well as around 30,000 Israelis.

Last week, Netanyahu declared that the annexed Golan would be Israeli “for eternity”. That followed an order he gave for troops to cross into a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces since 1974. Troops also seized areas beyond the buffer, including on Mount Hermon.

Israel portrayed the move, which drew international condemnation, as a temporary and defensive measure after what Netanyahu’s office called a “vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone”, following Assad’s fall.

In the aftermath of Assad’s overthrow, Israel also launched hundreds of strikes on Syria — according to a war monitor — targeting strategic military sites and weapons, including chemical weapons.

On Sunday, the Israeli premier said his country had “no interest in confronting Syria. Israel’s policy toward Syria will be determined by the evolving reality on the ground”.

In a video statement following a phone call with US President-elect Donald Trump, Netanyahu said Syria had attacked Israel in the past and allowed others including Lebanese Hezbollah to do so from its territory.

“To ensure that what happened in the past does not happen again, we have taken a series of intensive actions in recent days,” he said. “Within a few days, we destroyed capabilities that the Assad regime had built over decades.”

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the head of the rebels who toppled Assad who now goes by his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, on Saturday accused Israel of “a new unjustified escalation in the region” by entering the buffer zone.

However, he said, “The general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts”.

Washington in 2019 became the first and so far only country to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, during Trump’s first term.