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Talks despite no trust
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said Damascus expects negotiations to resume soon with Israel over a security deal he hopes will lead to Israel’s withdrawal from Syrian land, while urging Israel to seize a “historic opportunity” as the door for diplomacy is open.
“urging Israel to seize a “historic opportunity” as the door for diplomacy is open”
Speaking in a Reuters interview in Damascus on Saturday, days after Israel bombed a Syrian airbase, al-Shaibani said Damascus’ priority is to halt Israeli attacks and stressed that confidence-building steps were needed in this direction.
Al-Shaibani said negotiations over the security agreement had been frozen since the start of the Iran war, and that contact between Syria and Israel was cut after the airbase strike.
He also said, “We do not trust Israel currently,” while adding that “I believe negotiations will resume soon.”
US envoy and pressure
Al-Shaibani told Reuters that the U.S. was trying continuously to put pressure on Israel to return to the dialogue table, while also saying it was “very hard to bet on Israel.”
He described a draft security arrangement that would require Israel to stop attacking Syria and be tied to an Israeli withdrawal from territory seized after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, with a buffer zone where only the United Nations would be present.
On Tuesday, U.S. special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack said Washington was working to establish a mechanism to prevent conflict among Israel, Turkiye and Syria, but al-Shaibani said there was no agreement yet on the mechanism.
The AP reported Barrack said Israel did not warn the United States before it struck the Abu Duhur base, and that the attack could have been Israel “baiting the Turks … that was the serious and worrying part.”
Zones, Golan, and next steps
Al-Shaibani said Syria and Israel have technically been in a state of war since 1948, and that Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in a 1967 war.
“The priority now is to “stop Israeli aggression even before reaching a security agreement””
He said the priority now is to “stop Israeli aggression even before reaching a security agreement,” and then “perhaps we can open the topics of peace and the Golan.”
He also said Syria respected Israel’s security concerns but expected Israel to respect those of Syria, including Israel’s use of its airspace, Israeli raids and arrests in the south.
In the same Reuters reporting, al-Shaibani said Syria draws on Turkish support in military training and cooperation, and that Damascus was thankful for Turkey’s support in rebuilding its military “and we won’t forgo support” as diplomacy remains open despite the freeze in contact.