Following a series of leaks about Syrian–Israeli contacts through various channels and capitals, Syria's interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, recently confirmed “indirect negotiations” were indeed taking place between Damascus and Tel Aviv. He made the comments after he met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, and said the talks were aimed at “calming tensions and preventing matters from spiralling out of control."
A flurry of negotiations involving businessmen, researchers, and American officials has almost certainly taken place in the past weeks. But speculation over the purpose of these talks varies—from preventing military escalation to the possible inclusion of Syria in the Abraham Accords.
A quick look at history shows that Syria-Israel talks are nothing new. The two countries have held talks many times in the past century, even before the 1948 Nakba. But more recently, a disengagement agreement was signed months after the October War of 1973. Another crucial negotiation took place under US auspices at the Madrid Conference in 1991 and continued intermittently until February 2011, when the Syrian uprising began. These talks were centred on the “land for peace" principle—namely, Israel’s withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which it occupied in June 1967, in exchange for Syria normalising diplomatic and trade relations.
Shifting calculations and formulas
In the early years of Bashar al-Assad’s presidency, when he blatantly hitched his wagon to Iran and Hezbollah, the formula shifted to one of “land for regional realignment", which dangled the return of the Golan Heights in exchange for Syria severing its strategic alliance with the 'axis'.
