Sharaa: Trump supports Damascus’s position on Israeli withdrawal from Syria, will push for it

There is a “good distance to go” before his country can reach an agreement with Israel, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa tells The Washington Post after becoming the first Syrian leader to meet the US president in Washington.

“To reach a final agreement, Israel should withdraw to their pre-Dec. 8 borders,” he says, referring to the date of the fall of the Bashar Assad regime and the simultaneous Israeli advance into the buffer zone between the two countries, and beyond, confirming that the two sides are involved in “direct negotiations.”

Sharaa argues that Israel’s invasion of Syria comes from “expansionist ambitions” and not security concerns.

Sharaa claims that US President Donald Trump indicated yesterday that he supports the Syrian position on Israel’s withdrawal, and “he will push as quickly as possible in order to reach a solution for this.”

“Israel has always claimed that it has concerns about Syria because it is afraid of the threats that the Iranian militias and Hezbollah represent,” he says. “We are the ones who expelled those forces out of Syria.”

Sharaa says Israeli demands that the territory south of Damascus be demilitarized are unreasonable, since it will cause chaos.

“If this demilitarized zone was used by some parties as a launching pad for hitting Israel, who is going to be responsible for that?” he says.

“Israel occupied the Golan Heights in order to protect Israel, and now they are imposing conditions in the south of Syria in order to protect the Golan Heights,” he says sardonically. “So after a few years, maybe they will occupy the center of Syria in order to protect the south of Syria. They will reach Munich on that pathway.”