(2 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jerusalem – 2 March 2025
1. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić-Radman at lecterns
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Gideon Saar, Israeli Foreign Minister:
“Israel has great connections with the Druze, we have also Druze minority here in Israel altogether. It is important that the new rulers of Damascus will respect the rights of minorities, including the rights of the Druze.”
3. Cutaway mid of ministers
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Gideon Saar, Israeli Foreign Minister:
“It is not an elected government that was elected by the Syrian people. It is not. It is a bunch of people, a bunch of jihadists that controlled in the past the region of Idlib and by force they took also other parts including Damascus. It doesn’t mean there is right to Initiate hostilities towards minorities whether be it the Druze, the Kurds, or the Alawites.”
5. Saar and Grlić-Radman
STORYLINE:
Israel’s foreign minister said Sunday that it was important that the "new rulers of Damascus will respect the rights of minorities, including the rights of the Druze.”
Gideon Saar was speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, standing alongside his visiting Croatian counterpart, Gordan Grlić-Radman.
Saar added that the new government in Syria was not elected by the people, but was instead a "bunch of jihadists.”
On Saturday, Israel’s defense ministry said the military has been instructed to prepare to defend a Druze settlement in the suburbs of Damascus in neighboring Syria.
It asserted that the minority it has vowed to protect is “under attack” by Syrian forces.
The statement Saturday followed an Israeli warning last weekend that the forces of Syria’s new government and the insurgent group that led last year’s ouster of former President Bashar Assad should not enter the area south of Damascus.
Saturday’s statement indicated that Israeli forces could push further into Syria as its new authorities try to consolidate control after more than a decade of civil war.
AP video by Sam McNeil
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