President Ahmed al-Sharaa said Friday that Syria was negotiating with Israel to reach a security agreement that would see Israel leave areas it occupied after the December overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n
As Islamist-led forces toppled Assad on December 8, Israel deployed troops to the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights which has separated Israeli and Syrian forces since an armistice that followed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.<\/p>\n
Israel has also launched hundreds of air strikes on targets in Syria and carried out incursions deeper into the south. Syria’s new authorities have not responded to the attacks.<\/p>\n
“We are now in a state of negotiations and dialogue on the issue of a security agreement,” Sharaa said in an interview with state television channel Alekhbariah.<\/p>\n
He said that Israel believed that Syria had “quit” the 1974 disengagement agreement after Assad’s fall, “even though Syria, from the first moment, expressed its commitment” to the accord.<\/p>\n
“Now, negotiations are underway on a security agreement to return Israel to where it was before December 8,” Sharaa said.<\/p>\n
Israel and Syria have no diplomatic relations, with the two countries technically at war since 1948.<\/p>\n
Last month, Syrian state media said Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer had met in Paris to discuss de-escalation and the situation in Druze-majority Sweida province after deadly sectarian violence.<\/p>\n
Also last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel was holding talks aimed at the demilitarisation of southern Syria.<\/p>\n
In the interview, Sharaa revealed that Syrian forces entered secret negotiations with key Assad ally Russia during the offensive that eventually toppled the longtime ruler.<\/p>\n
“When we reached Hama in the battle of liberation, there were negotiations between us and Russia,” Sharaa said.<\/p>\n
When forces arrived in Homs further south, Russia “stayed away from the battle… as part of an agreement reached between us”, he said.<\/p>\n
Sharaa also noted how his forces avoided attacking Russia’s Hmeimim air base on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.<\/p>\n
Russia’s naval base in Tartus and its air base at Hmeimim are Moscow’s only official military outposts outside the former Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
Assad fled to Russia from Hmeimim.<\/p>\n
bur-lg\/tw<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Ahmed al-Sharaa said Friday that Syria was negotiating with Israel to reach a security agreement that would see Israel leave areas it occupied after the December overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. As Islamist-led forces toppled Assad on December 8, Israel deployed troops to the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights which has separated Israeli […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[95,93,276,125],"class_list":["post-10163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional","tag-conflict","tag-israel","tag-russia","tag-syria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}