Syria confirms backchannel dialogue with Israel on security matters

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Wednesday confirmed that his country was currently taking part in indirect talks with Israel. Reports earlier in the day said that the United Arab Emirates had facilitated a backchannel for dialogue between Jerusalem and Damascus.

The talks were first reported by Reuters, citing three people familiar with the matter, who said that they were set up after al-Sharaa’s visit to the UAE on April 13, and are focused on security and intelligence matters and confidence-building between the two states, which have no official relations.

Sharaa said Wednesday that backchannel negotiations are aimed at “easing tensions and preventing the situation from spiraling out of control for all involved parties.”

He added that “the Israeli intervention (military incursion into Syrian territory) constitutes a violation of the 1974 agreement” between Israel and Syria, and emphasized that since taking office, he has been committed to upholding this agreement.

Sharaa also stated that Syria is reaching out to any country with ties to Israel in an effort to pressure it to halt what he described as interventions and attacks in Syria.

He made the remarks during a press conference following a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. The visit marks the first trip by the Syrian president to Europe since he assumed office.

A Syrian security source described the effort to Reuters as currently focused on “technical matters,” and said there was no limit to what may eventually be discussed.

The senior Syrian security source said the backchannel was limited strictly to security-related issues, focusing on several counterterrorism files.

The source said that purely military matters, particularly those concerning Israeli army activities in Syria, fell outside the scope of the current channel.

The intelligence source said UAE security officials, Syrian intelligence officials and former Israeli intelligence officials were involved in the mechanism, among others.

They spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

The UAE foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment.

The mediation effort preceded Israeli strikes in Syria last week, including one just 500 yards from the presidential palace in Damascus, and Reuters could not establish if the mechanism has been used since the strikes occurred.

Israel has framed the strikes as a message to Syria’s new rulers in response to threats against Syria’s Druze, a minority sect that is an offshoot of Islam with adherents in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Informal mediation between Israel and Syria aimed at calming the situation has taken place in the last week via other channels, according to one of the sources and a regional diplomat. They declined to elaborate.

Syria’s government has condemned Israel’s strikes as escalatory and as foreign interference, and says the new government in Damascus is working to unify the country after 14 years of civil war.

The new rulers have also made efforts to show they pose no threat to Israel, meeting representatives of the Jewish community in Damascus and abroad and recently detaining two senior members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terror group that participated in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel and took several of the 251 hostages kidnapped to Gaza.

A letter sent by Syria’s foreign ministry to the US State Department last month, seen by Reuters, said, “We will not allow Syria to become a source of threat to any party, including Israel.”

Israel has treated such claims with intense suspicion, due to the new leadership’s roots in Islamism and jihadism.

Minority fears

Israel has struck in Syria for years in a shadow campaign aimed at weakening Iran and its allies, including the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, which grew their influence after entering the country’s civil war on the side of former president Bashar al-Assad.

Israeli military operations have escalated since rebels ousted Assad in December, with Jerusalem saying it will not tolerate an Islamist militant presence in southern Syria. Israel has bombed what it says are military targets across the country, and Israeli ground forces have entered southwestern Syria, where they are currently stationed in a number of outposts near the border with the Golan Heights.

Reuters reported in February that Israel has lobbied the US to keep Syria decentralized and isolated, framing its approach around suspicion of Sharaa, who once headed a local branch of al-Qaeda before renouncing ties to the group in 2016.

The UAE government also has concerns about the Islamist bent of Syria’s new leaders, but Sharaa’s meeting with President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan last month went very well, the sources said, helping to assuage some of Abu Dhabi’s concerns.

The sources noted the meeting lasted several hours, making Sharaa late for a subsequent engagement.

The backchannel with Israel was established days later, the sources said.

Damascus sees the UAE’s ties with Israel, established in a historic US-brokered deal in 2020, as a key avenue to address issues with Israel, given the absence of direct relations between the two states.

Israel’s latest strikes in Syria followed days of clashes between Sunni Muslim and Druze gunmen triggered by a voice recording of unclear origin purportedly insulting the Prophet Mohammed, leaving more than two dozen people dead.

Jerusalem has vowed to protect the Syrian Druze, and the IDF has facilitated the evacuation of several Syrian Druze injured in clashes to receive medical treatment in Israel.

Syria’s government has since reached an agreement with Druze factions in the Druze heartland region of Suweida to hire local security forces from their ranks, in a move that has so far reduced tensions.

The fighting posed the latest challenge for Sharaa, who has repeatedly vowed to unite all of Syria’s armed forces under one structure and govern the country, fractured by 14 years of civil war until Assad’s overthrow.

But incidents of sectarian violence, notably the killing of hundreds of pro-Assad Alawites in March, have hardened fears among minority groups about the now-dominant Islamists and sparked condemnation from global powers.