Is Normalization with Syria Imminent?

An Israeli-Syrian détente is not a foregone conclusion.

Former Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi called the UN Security Council a ‘terror council,’ proposed moving UN Headquarters from New York to Libya, called for a two-state solution merging Israel and Palestine called Isratine, and tore up a copy of the UN Charter. Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, speaking one day after former US President George W. Bush at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in 2006, remarked, “The devil came here yesterday and it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.” In a matter of days, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa will address UNGA, the first Syrian leader to do so since 1967. It is safe to assume al-Sharaa’s address will not be as bombastic as those of Gaddafi or Chávez. It will be interesting, nonetheless.

In July, The Jerusalem Post reported that al-Sharaa’ would meet in Washington ahead of UNGA with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, to sign a security agreement under the patronage of President Trump. Speaking from Damascus in late May, US Ambassador to Turkey and Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said that Israel and Syria had a ‘solvable problem’ and a solution could start with a non-aggression pact focusing on boundaries and borders. More recently, in August, Syrian Foreign Minister As’ad al-Shaibani met in Paris for direct talks with Israeli officials, brokered by U.S. officials, to discuss security and stabilization issues; Syrian officials have not yet embraced the prospect of joining the Abraham Accords, which the Administration has pushed for. Is peace about to break out?

Perhaps. But more likely as part of a limited security agreement that prevents tensions from escalating than in the context of the Abraham Accords. Syria’s longstanding territorial disputes with Israel make it more like Egypt and Jordan – which fought several large conventional wars with Israel – than any of the Abraham Accords signatories on the region’s periphery, such as the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, or Morocco. Israeli cartoonist Amos Biderman captured this dynamic masterfully in a political cartoon in mid-July. In it, Trump asks al-Sharaa, “Will you join the Abraham Accords?” to which al-Sharaa replies “If you will it, it is no dream,” the famous quote by the founder of modern political Zionism Theodor Herzl that served as a call to action for the Zionist movement, urging followers to realize their seemingly impossible goals. Yet two primary primary factors complicate Israeli-Syrian peacemaking:

1. The Golan Heights

At the heart of the countries’ dispute lie the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau Israel conquered after the Six Day War in 1967, and which has been the focus of previous rounds of negotiations between Damascus and Jerusalem. What could therefore be on the agenda is some kind of land-for-peace formula that invokes the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. The composition of the current ruling coalition in Israel – the most right-wing in the country’s history – casts doubt on Israel’s appetite to make territorial concessions, especially since the US recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan during the first Trump Administration. The old Israeli bumper sticker Ha ‘Am ‘im HaGolan (The nation is with the Golan) reflects the popular opposition to returning the territory. But the Golan’s importance to Syria has similarly been emphasized repeatedly by Syrian officials and pundits over the years. Former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad himself famously told his U.S. counterpart Bill Clinton in 2000 he wanted to swim in the Sea of Galilee. As some analysts have pointed out, a useful first step could be a non-aggression pact with clearly delineated rules of engagement that prioritizes security cooperation.

In a recent podcast interview (in Hebrew) with Ynet podcast HaKoteret (the headline), Dr. Yehuda Blanga of Bar Ilan University laid out three reasons a deal is probably not imminent, focusing on the Golan: (1) al-Sharaa’s family, as his kunya once suggested, is al-Jolani (i.e. from the Golan, or al-Jolan in Arabic). For a leader with direct family ties to the Golan, giving in to Israeli demands on highly symbolic territory is not a great look (2) From 1994 – when former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin engaged in negotiations with former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad – until the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, all previous Israeli prime ministers have discussed returning the Golan to Syria in exchange for peace, and; (3) beyond its strategic geography, the Golan is also an economically and agriculturally important area.

2. Military Interventions in Syria and Beyond

Shortly after the Assad regime collapsed in December 2024, Israel launched dozens of airstrikes targeting Syria’s conventional and chemical weapons arsenals to remove future military threats. Since then, Israel has intervened on behalf of Syria’s Druze minority – concentrated in the southwest and who have clashed with neighboring Sunni Bedouin tribes – striking the Syrian Ministry of Defense in Damascus and citing protection of the Druze as justification.

While these strikes do not make a diplomatic arrangement impossible, they have led Syrian authorities, including al-Sharaa himself, to speak up, accusing Israel or seeking ‘chaos and destruction.’ Israel has also found itself in hot water with several key allies of the new Syria, such as Turkey and the Gulf states. Beyond southwestern Syria, broader competing Israeli and Turkish security objectives in Syria have raised the risk that an accident could escalate into hot conflict. In April, Israel bombed a site in Syria earmarked for a Turkish base; although a military hotline now exists, Turkey recently suspended trade with Israel and closed its ports and airspace to Israel in protest of its war in Gaza. Beyond its support for the Druze, Israeli officials have expressed deep suspicion of al-Sharaa due to his jihadist roots. Turkey, however, was and remains very close to al-Sharaa.

Israeli attacks across the region, most recently against Hamas senior leaders in Doha, have alienated the Gulf States. Saudi, Emirati, and other regional officials strongly condemned the attack. Earlier this month, the UAE – which is investing heavily in Syria’s reconstruction – publicly threatened that Israel’s planned annexation of large portions of the West Bank would ‘end the vision of regional integration.’ For its part, Saudi Arabia – which has repeatedly criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza and is leading, alongside France, a global campaign to hasten the implementation of a two-state solution through recognition of a Palestinian state – has been an active partner in promoting investment in Syria and in helping the country overcome its debt burden.

In this environment, it is hard to imagine a scenario where al-Sharaa concludes a full-blown agreement with Israel while his closest economic and diplomatic partners of Turkey and Gulf states are increasingly creating distance from Israel. We will be watching closely to see what results concretely from al-Sharaa’s upcoming visit to the US beyond photo ops, meetings, and written statements, and whether these take Syria and Israel closer to a sustainable arrangement of one form or another.


All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.