Syria's Foreign Minister Says Diplomacy With Israel Is Still Possible — If the Conditions Are Right

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said the door for diplomacy with Israel remains open and urged Jerusalem to seize a "historic opportunity," in an interview with Reuters published on August 23, 2026.

Al-Shaibani said he expects talks over a security deal — one that would lead to Israel's withdrawal from Syrian territory — to resume soon. Those negotiations were frozen at the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, and no date has been set for their resumption. The United States, which has spent more than a year trying to broker a security agreement between Israel and the government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, is pressuring Israel to return to the negotiating table, according to al-Shaibani.

The shape of the proposed agreement is fairly detailed. Al-Shaibani said the two sides had earlier this year "agreed on paper to almost everything" regarding a deal that would require Israel to stop attacking Syria and withdraw from territory it seized after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. The proposed security deal would establish several security zones in Syrian territory near the Israeli border, including a buffer zone — a demilitarized strip where only United Nations personnel would be present. Damascus's priority, al-Shaibani said, is to halt Israeli attacks, and he argued that confidence-building steps from Israel would be needed to get there.

The territorial dispute at the center of these talks traces back to the immediate aftermath of al-Assad's ouster in 2024. In the days after his fall, Israel seized territory in southwest Syria, citing the need to protect its citizens, and bombed dozens of Syrian military sites. More recently, Israel bombed the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Syria, claiming Damascus was about to allow Turkish forces to deploy there. Both Syria and Turkiye denied the claim.

Al-Shaibani was candid about the trust gap. "We do not trust Israel currently," he said. He argued that Israel has tried to maintain its security through military force and has not succeeded anywhere, while still expressing his belief that negotiations will resume soon. He also said Syria has "very great hope" of building stable relationships with its neighbors.

The interview, reported across multiple outlets including Reuters, Al Jazeera, Haaretz, and The Times of Israel on August 23, comes amid a broader diplomatic push by Damascus. Asharq Al-Awsat, in a report published August 21, described al-Shaibani outlining the record of 606 days of Syria's new diplomacy, characterizing a shift from "hard power to diplomacy."

The broader context here is a post-Assad Syrian government working to establish international legitimacy while juggling multiple security challenges. The al-Sharaa government, which emerged from the coalition that toppled al-Assad, has been navigating competing pressures: US mediation efforts, Israeli military operations on Syrian soil, and regional actors including Turkiye, whose own interests in northern Syria complicate the picture. Al-Shaibani's description of near-complete agreement on paper, followed by a freeze tied to the Iran conflict, suggests the framework was at an advanced stage before external escalation disrupted its momentum.

Several tensions are worth keeping in mind when assessing where these talks are headed. The gap between Damascus's stated openness to dialogue and its explicit acknowledgment of zero trust in Israel raises the question of what confidence-building measures could realistically bridge that divide. Al-Shaibani's framing places the onus on Israel to act, while Israel's recent strikes, including the Abu al-Duhur bombing, suggest a continued preference for military action over negotiated security arrangements. The US role as broker adds another layer: Washington's leverage over Jerusalem, and whether pressure from the Trump administration can move Israel back to a table it apparently left when the Iran campaign began, will likely determine whether the "historic opportunity" al-Shaibani invokes becomes real or stays rhetorical.

The proposed UN-only buffer zone is a notable element. It signals Damascus's preference for multilateral mechanisms — involving international institutions like the UN — over direct bilateral security guarantees from Israel, and it would mark a reactivation of UN disengagement frameworks along the Golan frontier under new post-Assad realities. Whether Israel would accept a UN-only arrangement, given its historical skepticism about international peacekeeping enforcement capabilities, is an open question.

For now, al-Shaibani's interview functions as both a signal to Washington and a public posture before regional audiences. The foreign minister is projecting a government ready to deal, while making clear that the path runs through American pressure on Israel and concrete de-escalation on the ground.