Syria, Israel hold US-mediated talks in Jordan to de-escalate tensions

Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani has met with Israeli quality officials successful Jordan, according to Syrian authorities media, arsenic the 2 sides enactment to de-escalate tensions pursuing an Israeli onslaught connected a Syrian airbase adjacent the Turkish border.

Syria’s Sana quality agency, citing a diplomatic source, said the talks were mediated by the United States and progressive a “high-level Israeli delegation”.

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The AFP quality bureau reported that al-Shaibani met the caput of Israel’s Mossad quality agency, Roman Gofman.

According to Sana, the discussions “focused connected establishing applicable mechanisms to halt Israeli attacks, arrests and targeting operations” arsenic good as “reviving negotiations for a lasting information statement betwixt the 2 sides”.

They also discussed efforts to easiness tensions betwixt Israel and Turkiye and to forestall their rivalry from spilling onto Syrian ‌territory, Sana reported.

The US has sought to broker a information statement betwixt Israel and the authorities of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa for much than a year. Israel has launched hundreds of strikes connected Syria since the autumn of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad successful December 2024 and sent troops into a United Nations-patrolled buffer portion that had agelong separated Israeli and Syrian forces successful the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

It besides bombed the Abu Duhur airbase successful northwestern Idlib connected Thursday, claiming the onslaught was to forestall Turkish troops from deploying astatine the base, a assertion Syria and Turkiye person denied.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan person besides traded barbs since the incident, with tensions precocious betwixt the 2 leaders.

According to Sana, the Syrian broadside stressed during Sunday’s talks “that Syria is simply a sovereign authorities with the afloat close to rebuild and make its nationalist service and find its alliances and partnerships successful enactment with its nationalist interests”. The Syrian broadside rejected “any arrangements oregon mechanisms that would restrict these sovereign rights,” it said.

Syria’s contiguous priorities successful the talks ⁠remained an Israeli withdrawal to positions held earlier al-Assad’s overthrow and the afloat restoration of a 1974 disengagement agreement, Sana reported.

The Syrian officials besides reaffirmed Damascus’s sovereignty implicit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, it added.

Israel’s ‘red lines’

Israeli media reported that the talks were “positive” and said Israeli officials had adopted a fig of reddish lines going into talks.

These see preventing Turkish subject enactment successful Syria, keeping the Syrian broadside of the Golan Heights demilitarised, “ensuring the security” of Syria’s Druze assemblage and preventing the Syrian service from acquiring definite strategical weapons systems.

They besides conditioned immoderate withdrawal from Syrian territories occupied by Israel connected “diplomatic achievements”.

During erstwhile rounds of US-mediated talks, Syria and Israel had agreed connected a joint mechanism to stock quality and defuse tensions. But the negotiations froze astatine the extremity of February, erstwhile the US and Israel launched their warfare connected Iran, without a day acceptable for resumption.

In an interrogation published up of the meeting, al-Shaibani told Reuters quality bureau that Damascus did not spot Israel, but that the door remained unfastened for diplomacy. He said Syria had chopped disconnected interaction wholly aft the Israeli onslaught connected Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase past week.

Al-Shaibani said the 2 sides had agreed connected insubstantial ⁠to “almost everything” astir the opening of the year, including arrangements for information zones successful confederate ⁠Syria and a buffer portion wherever lone UN forces would beryllium present.

Hassan Mneimneh, a governmental expert and researcher astatine the Middle East Institute, told Al Jazeera that the existent circular of talks was improbable to de-escalate tensions fixed Israel’s way record.

“It’s rather the opposite, meaning present that Syria has indicated its tendency to person the concern de-escalate, Israel is apt to bring successful much demands and person the Americans fundamentally negociate these caller demands with Syria, against immoderate benignant of enlargement of Turkish beingness successful the northbound and beyond the north,” helium said.

Mneimneh added that Syria was “afraid that the state volition go a battlefield” betwixt Israel and Turkiye and was acrophobic astir Israel’s territorial drawback successful the country, stretching “all the mode to Hermon, to Jabal al-Sheikh successful its totality almost, and each the mode to 3 confederate provinces”.

So, from the Syrian perspective, Mneimneh added, the talks with Israel look to beryllium aimed astatine avoiding “the disintegration of Syrian authority” arsenic good arsenic ensuring immoderate struggle betwixt Israel and Turkiye does not forestall Syria from “forming, establishing, consolidating polity aft the autumn of” al-Assad.