The Israeli government has approved a $334 million plan to transfer thousands more Israeli civilians into the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, Human Rights Watch said today. The decision, adopted by the cabinet on April 17, 2026, is a clear statement of intent to commit war crimes.
"Israel's cabinet has put public money behind a war crime in Syria at the same time as it is turbocharging settlement expansion in the West Bank alongside continued impunity for violence against Palestinians there," said Hiba Zayadin, senior Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch. "A permanent population transfer into Syrian territory violates international norms with grave implications for long-displaced Syrians."
The European Union and its member states, the United Kingdom, and other countries with leverage should respond by suspending their trade deals with Israel and adopting a ban on trade and business with illegal Israeli settlements, applying to the occupied Golan Heights as well as the West Bank. Countries should also suspend arms transfers to Israel. Where national laws allow, prosecutors in third countries should open criminal investigations under the principle of universal jurisdiction against Israeli officials and others credibly implicated in the transfer of civilians into occupied territory.
The cabinet approved the plan to develop the settlement of Katzrin, founded in 1977, into what officials described as the Golan's "first city," with the stated goal of bringing 3,000 new Israeli settler families to the occupied territory by 2030.
The plan funds infrastructure, housing, public services, and academic facilities in Katzrin, including a new university branch and specialized medical facilities. The Directorate of Tnufa for the North, an Israeli government agency founded in 2024 to facilitate the rebuilding and development of northern areas of Israel affected by hostilities since 2023, will oversee the project coordination with local authorities.
As Human Rights Watch has previously documented in the context of settlements in the occupied West Bank, businesses that contribute to the transfer of civilians into occupied territory, including by building or servicing settlements, risk complicity in violations of international humanitarian law and associated war crimes. Companies doing business with or in the occupied Golan Heights face the same risk.
Israel occupied the Golan Heights in 1967 and extended Israeli laws into it in 1981, a de facto annexation, but the United States is the only country in the world that recognizes Israel's purported annexation of the territory. The Golan Heights remains occupied territory under international law.
Since 1967, Israeli authorities have barred the displaced Syrians, who retain the right to return, from returning to their homes in the occupied Golan Heights and destroyed hundreds of Syrian villages and farms in the territory. According to the Syrian government, those displaced, including their descendants, now number in the hundreds of thousands.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 497 declared Israeli authorities' annexation null and void and without international legal effect, stating that the Fourth Geneva Convention continued to apply to the occupied territory. The UN General Assembly has reinforced this point in annual resolutions, most recently in December 2025. The transfer by an occupying power of parts of its civilian population into occupied territory is prohibited under article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention and constitutes a war crime.
The Syrian government should build on initial steps to address serious international crimes committed in Syria both during the Assad era and since, including the establishment of a national transitional justice commission to put in place legal frameworks for domestic investigations and prosecution, Human Rights Watch said.
International accountability options are also available. Despite public meetings between the Syrian government and International Criminal Court (ICC) officials following the December 2024 fall of Bashar al-Assad, Syria is not currently a state party to the ICC's Rome Statute. Syrian transitional authorities could open a pathway to international accountability by acceding to the statute and by lodging a declaration under article 12(3) accepting the court's jurisdiction over crimes committed on Syrian territory, including those committed prior to the date of accession.
The April 17 plan comes as the Israeli military has expanded further into southern Syria. Since the fall of the Assad government, Israeli forces have occupied Syrian territory beyond the 1974 disengagement line, established multiple military positions inside Syria, and carried out frequent ground raids, airstrikes, and other operations in Quneitra, Daraa, and Sweida governorates.
Human Rights Watch has documented serious abuses by the Israeli military during these operations, including the forced displacement of Syrian residents from villages in the newly occupied area, which is a war crime. Soldiers entered villages near the separation line, held families at gunpoint for hours, and forced residents out without allowing them to take their belongings or make any arrangements for shelter, safety, or return. In some villages, Israeli bulldozers later razed homes overnight, uprooting the orchards and gardens around them.
Israeli forces have constructed fixed military installations adjacent to the affected villages and indicated they intend to remain indefinitely, making meaningful return effectively impossible. They have also fenced off farmland, grazing pastures, and water sources, cutting families off from generations-old livelihoods, and razed large portions of village forest reserves. Israeli forces have also arbitrarily detained Syrian civilians and transferred them into Israel, where they are held without charge and incommunicado.
Israel has simultaneously been accelerating expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank amid a growing wave of settler violence. Earlier in April, the Israeli cabinet approved the construction of 34 new settlements, the largest single approval of settlements to date. The current government has approved 102 new settlements since it took office in 2022, increasing the total number of illegal settlements by 80 percent, from 127 to 229.
Israeli officials are increasingly explicit that one of the goals of illegal settlement is to erase any possibility of a Palestinian state. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settler attacks now account for 75 percent of all displacements recorded in 2026. The ICC has an ongoing investigation into crimes committed in Palestine.
A similar pattern of mass displacement is unfolding in Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced following multiple Israeli displacement orders for southern Lebanon beginning in March 2026, and Israeli forces continue to occupy dozens of villages along the border. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated on March 16 that Shia residents of southern Lebanon will be prevented from returning for an indefinite period, which Human Rights Watch has found suggests an intent to forcibly displace the civilian population based on religion.
The EU and its member states continue to recognize the Syrian Golan Heights as occupied territory, consistent with Resolution 497 and the EU's longstanding position. In June 2025, an EU review found indications that Israel was in breach of article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which makes respect for human rights an essential element of the agreement.
The European Commission proposed the suspension of trade-related provisions in September 2025, but that has not happened. Despite the International Court of Justice's 2024 ruling, the EU also continues to trade with Israel's illegal settlements, with only Spain having introduced a ban.
"The EU has powerful tools at its disposal but refuses to use them," Zayadin said. "The US denies the reality that the Golan is occupied Syrian territory. Israel's April 17 plan is the predictable result when an occupying power is confident that its impunity will hold. Syrian authorities can change the calculus by taking steps on national justice and joining the ICC."
