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Diplomacy Door Open
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said the door for diplomacy with Israel is open and urged Israel to seize a “historic opportunity,” while he told Reuters that he expects talks over a security deal that would lead to Israel’s withdrawal from Syrian territory to resume soon.
“urging it to seize a “historic opportunity””
Al-Shaibani said negotiations over the security agreement were frozen at the start of the US-Israel war on Iran and that no date has been set for resuming talks, adding that Damascus’s priority is to halt Israeli attacks and build confidence in that direction.
He said Damascus “does not trust Israel currently,” and described Israel’s approach as trying to maintain security through “brute force” without succeeding.
The Reuters interview also tied the stalled dialogue to Israel’s bombardment of the Abu al-Duhur airbase, which Syria and Turkiye denied was about to host Turkish forces.
Al-Shaibani said Syria and Israel had “agreed on paper to almost everything” earlier this year, including a buffer zone where only the United Nations would be present, but he accused Israel of evading implementation.
US-Turkey Alarm
The diplomatic push came as US envoy Tom Barrack said Israel’s strike on Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase nearly triggered a direct military confrontation with Turkiye, after Israeli aircraft approached within about 80 kilometers of the Turkish border without notifying Ankara.
Barrack said Washington checked intelligence suggesting Turkiye might be moving military equipment or personnel onto a Syrian air base and determined that the deployment was not taking place, but he said Israel struck runways at the Syrian base without notifying either Washington or Turkiye.
In Barrack’s account, Türkiye detected the approaching aircraft but did not know their purpose or target, raising the possibility of a direct clash between Israeli and Turkish aircraft.
Barrack said the United States is now focused on lowering tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and preventing another incident from escalating, urging “lower the temperature, increase the dialogue, increase the discourse, and avoid these abrupt kinetic action.”
He also described two possible explanations for why Israel carried out the strike despite diplomatic discussions, including a breakdown in communication between Mossad, the Israeli military and Netanyahu’s office, and the possibility that “The Israelis were baiting the Turks.”
Pressure and Stakes
Israeli media described growing international pressure as putting Israel under diplomatic strain, with Ynet saying criticism has intensified from Europe to Australia over settlements, Gaza aid worker killings and a Syria strike.
“European officials have warned that construction in E1 poses an “existential threat””
Ynet reported that six European countries condemned Israel’s plans for construction in the E1 area near the illegal Ma’ale Adumim settlement, and that European officials warned construction in E1 poses an “existential threat” to the two-state solution.
The same Anadolu Ajansı report said Australia, Britain and Canada jointly condemned Israel’s decision not to open a criminal investigation into the April 2024 strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza, describing the decision as “shameful.”
In the Syria track, Al-Shaibani said the mechanism being discussed by US special envoy Thomas Barrack had not yet been agreed upon, and he said Damascus wants it to stop attacks and pave the way for the security deal rather than “entrenching … Israeli occupation.”
He framed the immediate stakes as stopping Israeli aggression before any security agreement, saying “Our focus now is to stop the aggression before anything else, even before the security agreement,” and then “perhaps we can open the topics of peace and the Golan.”