Syria's al-Sharaa Tells UN Golan Heights Will Remain Syrian, Cites 500 Israeli Strikes Since Assad Fell

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa stood before the 81st UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, September 23, and declared the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights will never stop being Syrian land.

"Any attempts that violate our sovereignty, violate international law, will be stopped. Golan will remain Syrian territories," al-Sharaa said, according to France 24 and Al Jazeera. He tied his claim to UN Security Council Resolution 497, the 1981 measure that declared Israel's annexation of the Golan "null and void," according to Anadolu Agency and TRT World.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed it in 1981. The United States was the only country to recognize that annexation until Colombia's hard-right government did so in August, according to both France 24 and Euronews. Al-Sharaa also referenced a December 2025 UN General Assembly vote in which 123 countries backed a resolution on the occupied Golan, and he pressed nations that abstained to reconsider, per Anadolu Agency.

The strikes he's counting

Al-Sharaa told the assembly Israel has carried out roughly 500 air and artillery strikes on Syria, more than 1,200 incursions, and about 300 arrests or detentions of Syrians since Bashar al-Assad's regime collapsed in December 2024, per France 24, Anadolu Agency, and Jordan News. "This is at odds with the orientation we're seeing at global level," he said. "It is reminiscent of an era that we thought was long gone."

He said Damascus remains committed to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement and wants Israeli forces to pull back to the lines held before December 8, 2024, the day Assad fled.

None of the sources here carry an on-record Israeli government response to al-Sharaa's specific strike tally or his sovereignty demand. Israel's security establishment has for decades treated the Golan's high ground as a strategic buffer against attacks from Syrian territory, a rationale that predates al-Sharaa's government and that Israeli officials have cited going back to before the 1967 war. That security argument, whatever one thinks of it, is the case Israel and its supporters would make for why the plateau shouldn't simply revert to a Damascus government that is barely two years removed from a civil war.

The New Jersey line

A day earlier, at an Atlantic Council panel in New York moderated by former U.S. national security official Brett McGurk, al-Sharaa said he told President Trump directly that Trump had no authority to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, according to Euronews. "Why don't you give New Jersey to the Israelis?" al-Sharaa said he told Trump. "You don't own the Golan Heights to give it to them, but you own New Jersey, and I believe New Jersey is full of Democrats, and they are not voting for Trump." He added that "the Golan has its people" and that neither he nor Trump had the right to cede it.

At the same panel, al-Sharaa said Syria-Israel negotiations have resolved nearly 90% of the outstanding issues needed for a security agreement, according to France 24. That's al-Sharaa's own characterization; no Israeli official is quoted confirming that figure in these reports.

Chemical weapons and the sanctions reset

Separately, Syria's UN representative Ibrahim Olabi told the Security Council the government has begun destroying chemical weapons caches left over from Assad's rule, working with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, according to Breitbart, citing the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency. Olabi called it part of a "profound political shift" meant to show Syria returning to the international system "through responsibility and fulfillment of its commitments." UN officials had previously said battlefield evidence pointed to Assad's forces using chemical weapons during the war, an accusation the Assad government and its allies Iran and Russia rejected.

Breitbart's framing repeatedly labels al-Sharaa's government "jihadi" and stresses his history as a former al-Qaeda-linked commander who led Hayat Tahrir al-Sham under the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani before taking Damascus in December 2024. That history is accurate. Al-Sharaa has since dropped the alias and pursued Western investment, and per Jordan News he told the assembly that the "clouds of sanctions" have cleared following the repeal of the Caesar Act and Syria's removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. He also claimed production has resumed at more than 3,000 industrial lines and that a transitional justice process is underway.

Remaining questions include whether Israel will respond publicly to al-Sharaa's strike count or his 90% negotiation claim, whether the OPCW will independently confirm Syria's chemical weapons destruction timeline, and whether more governments follow Colombia's lead in recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan or instead back Syria's push to revive Resolution 497 at the UN.