By: ‘Atef al-Joulani.[*]
(Exclusively for al-Zaytouna Centre).
In recent months, there has been a notable shift in the stance of the new Syrian leadership toward Israel. The leadership has demonstrated increased political flexibility, a clear interest in de-escalation, and an effort to avoid adversarial relations. It has also expressed a willingness to initiate communication with the Israeli side. These developments raise important questions about the motivations driving this change and the factors likely to shape Syria’s future approach to managing its relationship with Israel.
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First: Determinants of the Syrian Position
A number of key factors influence the Syrian leadership’s stance in managing its relationship with Israel. The most prominent include:
a. Internal Determinants, most notably:
1. The ideological orientation of the new leadership, shaped by the legacy of President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s former intellectual and political positions, as well as those of the Ahrar al-Sham movement, both rooted in an Islamic jihadist background.
2. The impact of security considerations and the leadership’s desire to achieve stability and consolidate the foundations of the new political system amid difficult internal and external challenges threatening national security.
3. The traditional stance of the Syrian public, which supports the Palestine issue and rejects normalization with Israel.
4. The inherited hardline position of the previous Syrian regime regarding relations with Israel, which consistently refused normalization over decades despite pressure and incentives.
5. The Syrian leadership’s strong desire to lift economic sanctions, ease the burden of the devastating economic collapse, and accelerate reconstruction efforts.
6. The leadership’s intention to preempt any Israeli exploitation of the minority issue to destabilize the country’s internal stability.
b. External Determinants, the most significant of which include:
1. The approach of the Trump administration to easing regional tensions, promoting the Arab-Israeli normalization process including Syrian-Israeli relations, and blocking Iranian and Russian influence in Syria.
2. Turkey’s strong influence on the new Syrian leadership’s strategy toward managing relations with Israel, coupled with Ankara’s aim to bolster the Syrian leadership’s regional and international legitimacy as a principal political ally in the area.
3. Israel’s aggressive military actions in Syria and the wider region, including the occupation of new areas within Syrian territory, contrasted with the new Syrian leadership’s preference to avoid military confrontation with Israel to prioritize internal political, security and economic concerns.
4. The ongoing Arab-Israeli normalization track and efforts by some Gulf actors involved in this process to sway the Syrian regime toward greater openness to Israel.
Second: Indicators of a Shift in the Official Syrian Position:
In recent weeks, clear signs have emerged indicating a notable change in Syria’s official approach to managing its relationship with Israel. The most prominent of these signs include:
• On 18/4/2025, US Congress member Cory Mills met with the Syrian president in Damascus and stated that Ahmad al-Sharaa “is open to addressing US concerns,” and that “Syria was interested under the right conditions in joining the Abraham Accords.” A few days later, on 21/4/2025, Marlin Stutzman also met with the Syrian president and noted al-Sharaa’s openness to “normalizing relations with Israel,” while emphasizing that this would depend on key conditions—chief among them, that “Syria must remain a unified and sovereign state.” Al Jazeera quoted a Syrian source as saying that the meeting between al-Sharaa and Mills covered a range of topics, including the Abraham Accords. The source added that al-Sharaa stressed the need for Israel to halt its bombing of Syria and to withdraw from the Golan Heights before any agreement could be considered.
• On 16/5/2025, CNN reported, citing an Israeli source, that direct talks had taken place in Azerbaijan between Israel and the new Syrian regime. The meeting was attended by the chief of the Israeli military’s Operations Directorate, Maj. Gen. Oded Basyuk, along with representatives of the Syrian government, and in the presence of Turkish officials.
• Following his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on 7/5/2025, the Syrian President stated that his country is engaged in “indirect talks through mediators” with Israel to calm tensions and “try to contain the situation so it does not reach the point where it escapes the control of both sides.”
• On 7/5/2025, Reuters reported that the “United Arab Emirates has set up a backchannel for talks between Israel and Syria,” and that the indirect contacts were “focused on security and intelligence matters and confidence-building between two states with no official relations.” The report noted that these efforts began days after al-Sharaa’s visited the UAE on 13/4/2025.
• On 18/5/2025, Israel announced that it had recovered a trove of documents, photographs, and personal belongings once owned by Israeli spy Eli Cohen, after a “covert and complex Mossad operation, in cooperation with an allied foreign intelligence service.” According to Reuters, the archive of material was in fact offered to Israel as an indirect gesture by al-Sharaa as he seeks to cool tensions and build President Trump’s confidence.
Third: Future Approaches to Managing Relations with the Israeli Side
The Syrian leadership appears to face three potential options for managing its relationship with the Israeli side:
1. Maintaining Syria’s established position of rejecting political, economic and security normalization with Israel, while cautiously engaging with any urgent security imperatives aimed at curbing Israel’s aggressive military actions inside Syrian territory.
2. Gradual, partial openness and rapprochement with Israel, framed as a response to pressing political, economic and security necessities.
3. Pursuing full normalization, whether bilateral or within a broader regional framework, led by Arab actors already engaged in the normalization track and the “Abraham Accords.”
Although the Syrian leadership has shown no intrinsic inclination to engage with Israel or normalize relations, due to its longstanding ideological stance and sustained public support for the Palestine issue and rejection of normalization, recent statements from Syrian officials suggest a possible shift toward a cautious, partial opening to Israel. This approach appears aimed at helping Syria navigate its current crisis and gradually emerge from its political “bottleneck.” It is being framed in terms of economic and security imperatives, as well as the regime’s desire to bolster its legitimacy and improve political relations with the US administration and the European Union. This trajectory is also influenced by Turkish policy orientations and the agendas of certain Gulf actors involved in the normalization process.
Conclusion
Although the new Syrian regime has so far approached its relationship with Israel with considerable caution, its evolving positioning within Arab, regional and international frameworks—combined with the experience of external actors in regime rehabilitation—may undermine its resistance posture and significantly narrow its maneuvering space. In this context, US President Donald Trump’s decision on 13/5/2025, to lift sanctions on Syria, followed by a similar decision from the European Union on 20/5/2025, aims to influence the new regime’s strategic choices and absorb it into what Washington defines as the “Arab moderation bloc,” whose members, to varying degrees, are open to normalization with Israel. Similar efforts appear to be underway to integrate Lebanon’s new political leadership into the same political configuration.
It is worth noting that even if the Syrian leadership opts for normalization and engagement with Israel, this does not necessarily guarantee the full approval it seeks. Israeli, US and Western pressure and coercion are likely to persist, with ongoing demands for concessions and compliance with conditions that would erode the regime’s national, pan-Arab and Islamic identity, effectively binding it to the Israeli-Western sphere of influence. Moreover, persistent doubts and suspicions surrounding Syria’s new leadership, due to their ideological backgrounds, are expected to remain. Consequently, Israel, Western powers and normalization states are likely to favor a policy of conditional and incremental engagement, and may ultimately prefer to see the current leadership replaced with one that is more pragmatic, loyal and aligned with Israeli-Western regional hegemony.
Thus, the game of balancing and managing priorities appears to be extremely delicate for the Syrian leadership. Losing its popular base and revolutionary credibility without securing Western approval would be a grave risk. Therefore, any flexible engagement, openness, or provisional political maneuvering in response to pressing realities must remain firmly grounded in national, pan-Arab, and Islamic fundamentals, as well as in the pulse of the Syrian people and the broader Ummah (Muslim nation).
| Political Insights: A periodic series that provides brief and condensed political analyses and position assessments, issued by Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Al-Zaytouna Centre. |
| Click here to download: >>Political Insights (17): Determinants of Syria’s Stance on Relations with Israel (4 pages, 565 KB) |
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