Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said on Saturday that negotiations on a security deal with Israel were focused on areas Israel has recently occupied and excluded the broader issue of the Golan Heights.
Got it in one. When Syria had the Golan Heights overlooking Israel, the Israeli communities below were bombed most days. Since Israel captured the heights, that stopped; but Israel did not return the favour, so communities on both sides of the border got to live undisturbed until after the 10/7/2023 invasion, when Hezbollah joined in, raining missiles and rockets down on the Israeli side of the border to the point that most of the residents moved away until the IDF put a stop to the nonsense.
Since the December 8, 2024, overthrow of Syria’s longtime ruler Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Lord of the Baath...
, Israel has sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces.
Israel and Syria’s new authorities have held several rounds of direct talks in recent months, and after negotiations in January — and under US pressure — they agreed to establish an intelligence-sharing mechanism as they edged towards a security agreement.
When asked at the Munich Security Conference about the scope of the talks with Israel, Shaibani said discussions were on "the withdrawal of Israel" from Syrian territory occupied after Assad’s ousting, "not from the Golan Heights, and this is another issue."
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and annexed it, a move that Syria and most countries don’t recognize.
They aren't good at accepting reality.
To reach a security deal, Israel should "respect the security of Syria and withdraw from these territories" recently entered, Shaibani said.The HTS/Al Nusra government needs to prove it can be trusted first. Perhaps start by stopping your people from harassing Christian, Druze, Kurds, and Shiites…
"These negotiations will certainly not lead to forcing an acceptance of the fait accompli imposed by Israel in southern Syria," he said."The end of these negotiations will be the withdrawal of Israel from the areas where it advanced" since December 2024, and with Israel refraining from "interfering in Syria’s internal affairs" and illusory sovereignty, Shaibani added.
Israel, which has demanded a demilitarized zone in southern Syria, carried out waves of
...KABOOM!...
s against military installations in the immediate aftermath of the lightning offensive that took out the Assad regime, citing the danger of them falling into jihadists’ hands.
It also intervened last year during unrest in the Druze-majority area of Sweida, at the urging of Druze in Israel, and it has had small-scale confrontations with terror groups inside Syria amid operations to kill or capture operatives, or to seize weapons.
SYRIAN FM, KURDISH COMMANDER SHARE MEETING WITH RUBIO
Shaibani on Friday met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...
in Munich and discussed a recent agreement between Damascus and the Kurds.
Mazloum Abdi, chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was also in attendance.
Syria’s government and the Kurds last month signed an agreement to gradually integrate Kurdish forces and institutions into the state, after the SDF ceded territory to advancing government troops.
Shaibani told the Munich conference that the Rubio meeting involving Abdi "confirms the new mindset Syria is adopting today."
"We do not view our national partners as enemies," he said, adding that the country’s national identity is "completed by Syria’s diversity."
The US military said on Friday it had completed the transfer of thousands of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group suspects, including many Syrians, to Iraq, after they were held in Kurdish-run prisons in northeast Syria for years.
Shaibani said Damascus was "prepared in the future to take back" Syrian detainees "to ease the burden on Iraq."
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