Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa now says a security arrangement with Israel is close, telling Al Jazeera that such a deal could open the way to the Abraham Accords. That sharpens the position he set out earlier to the Russian agency TASS, when he described Syria as working with friendly countries towards an agreement ending the state of war in place since 1948, while ruling out any cession of the Golan Heights. Terms, mediators and a timetable remain unspecified, and the available reporting still carries no Israeli response on the record, so how near an agreement actually is cannot be confirmed from Damascus's account alone. Alongside the diplomatic track, al-Sharaa's government is consolidating control over armed forces at home: Damascus has integrated roughly 9,000 former members of the US-backed YPG into Syria's national security institutions as part of an effort to unify the country's armed forces, according to Daily Sabah. That absorption gives the government a stronger claim to be the single address for any security understanding with Israel. It runs in parallel with al-Sharaa's courting of Washington, where he has praised Donald Trump's decision to remove Syria from the US terrorism list, and with an unresolved question in the other direction: he has said the future of Russian military bases in Syria is still under discussion with Moscow.
Syria and Israel have had no peace treaty and have been formally in a state of war since 1948, with the Golan Heights, held by Israel, the core territorial dispute between them. Ahmed al-Sharaa now leads Syria as president from Damascus and has been seeking to end the country's diplomatic and economic isolation. Part of that isolation stemmed from US sanctions and designations, including Syria's place on the American list of state sponsors of terrorism, which President Donald Trump has moved to remove. Russia, a longstanding backer of the Syrian state, maintains military bases in the country, and their status is being negotiated between Damascus and Moscow. Al-Sharaa's outreach therefore runs on two tracks at once: a possible security understanding with Israel, and a renegotiation of Syria's ties with its established partners.
President Ahmed al-Sharaa told Al Jazeera that Damascus is close to a security arrangement with Israel that could open the way to the Abraham Accords. Syria has meanwhile integrated about 9,000 former members of the US-backed YPG into its national security institutions as part of an effort to unify the country's armed forces, Daily Sabah reports.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said Damascus is working with friendly countries towards a security agreement with Israel that would end the state of war in place since 1948, but told TASS that Syria will not cede the Golan Heights. Al Jazeera reported that he praised Donald Trump's decision to remove Syria from the US terrorism list, while saying the future of Russian military bases remains under discussion with Moscow.