U.S. envoy Tom Barrack will mediate the new round of negotiations between Damascus and Jerusalem.
Senior Israeli and Syrian officials were scheduled to meet in Paris on Monday for two days of U.S.-mediated negotiations on a border security agreement, Axios reported on Sunday.
Syria’s state-run SANA news agency, citing a government official, said a delegation led by the country’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and General Intelligence chief Hussein al-Salama was taking part in the Paris talks. They will focus on reactivating the 1974 disengagement agreement and securing an Israeli pullback to lines held before Dec. 8, 2024, the date the Assad regime fell, under a “reciprocal security agreement” that preserves Syria’s “nonnegotiable” national rights, according to the official.
The talks, the fifth round but the first in nearly two months, follow President Donald Trump’s request to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at their Mar-a-Lago meeting last week, a “source with knowledge” told journalist Barak Ravid, who also cited an Israeli official in his reporting.
Netanyahu has appointed a new team led by Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter.
Trump said after meeting Netanyahu in Florida on Dec. 29 that he expects Israel and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa “will get along.”
Talks were reportedly delayed due to “big gaps” between the two parties and also because of the resignation of Jerusalem’s top negotiator, Ron Dermer.
According to Ravid’s reporting, the goal is a security pact that would demilitarize southern Syria and secure an Israeli withdrawal from the parts of Syria where the army established a presence following the fall of the Assad regime. The Trump administration views such a pact as a potential first step toward broader diplomatic normalization between Damascus and Jerusalem.
Former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who leads the opposition Yisrael Beiteinu Party, told JNS at a Knesset faction meeting on Monday that Damascus’s new Sunni Islamist government is no different than the Assad regime, with the Turks replacing Iran as Syria’s ally.
“What we saw there was a massacre of Druze, as well as Alawites,” said Liberman, in reference to government-backed attacks on minorities. He added, “We need to take care of our own security and ultimately reach understandings there that will improve Israel’s security.”