In first, Netanyahu reveals he spoke with Syria's Sharaa after 2025 strike in Damascus

‘Very short and very sharp’ call came shortly after Israel bombed government targets with stated aim of protecting Syrian Druze, PM tells Druze supporters

By Lazar Berman

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Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday told Druze supporters that he spoke with Syria’s leader Ahmed al-Sharaa shortly after Israel, citing the need to protect Syrian Druze, bombed government targets in Damascus last year.

The comments were the first report that a conversation took place between Netanyahu and Syria’s president, who took power in late 2024 after deposing longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad. It may be the first-ever direct conversation between the leaders of Israel and Syria, which have fought multiple wars and have no diplomatic relations.

Israel, home to some 150,000 Druze, struck the Syrian Defense Ministry and near the presidential palace in Damascus in July 2025 amid sectarian bloodshed in Syria’s predominantly Druze Sweida province.

More than 2,000 people, including 789 Druze civilians, were killed in the fighting between armed Druze factions and Bedouin fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog. Government security forces intervened at the time on the side of the Bedouins and were accused of executing Druze civilians and other abuses.

Israel, whose Druze population has deep ties to Syria’s Druze, faced internal pressure to act to protect the community.

“I picked up the phone to Sharaa,” Netanyahu said at a conference his Likud party hosted for the Druze community. “It was a very short and very sharp conversation. And the slaughter stopped.”

“I will do everything I can to protect our brothers and your brothers,” he told the conference in the northern Druze town of Yarka.

Members of the Druze minority and their supporters protest outside the US Embassy in Jerusalem, on July 28, 2025, amid clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze armed groups in the southern Syria’s predominatly Druze Sweida province. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Israel seized a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border and carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria after jihadist forces led by Sharaa ousted Assad in December 2024, at the end of a nearly 14-year civil war.

Israel has said the military action was necessary to prevent terrorist forces from exploiting the disarray to establish themselves in the border region.

Damascus and Jerusalem have held several rounds of direct talks since September 2025 for a security deal, with Syria demanding a full Israeli withdrawal.

Amid the talks, Israel’s Mossad chief Roman Gofman met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani in Jordan in August to defuse tensions after Israel struck a north Syrian base where it said it identified preparations for Turkish military activity.

Sharaa, whom Israeli officials initially dismissed as a “terrorist in a suit,” had already confirmed in May 2025 that his country was holding indirect talks with Israel via an Emirati backchannel aimed at defusing tensions.

Speaking at the UN last month, Sharaa held out the possibility of peace with Israel while also assailing the country’s military activity in Syria and vowing not to relinquish Damascus’s claim to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967’s Six Day War.

AFP and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.