Israel and Syria are in direct contact and have in recent weeks held face-to-face meetings aimed at calming tensions and preventing conflict in the border region between the two longtime foes, five people familiar with the matter said.
The contacts mark a significant development in ties between states that have been on opposite sides of conflict in the Middle East for decades, as the US encourages the new Islamist rulers in Damascus to establish relations with Israel and Israel eases its strikes on Syria.
They also build on back-channel talks via intermediaries since Salafist tough guys Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
toppled Syrian strongman Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Horror of Homs...
in December, said two Syrian and two Western sources, as well as a regional intelligence source familiar with the matter.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject for two nations with no official ties and a history of enmity. The direct talks and their scope have not been previously reported.
On the Syrian side, the sources said contacts have been led by security bigshot Ahmad al-Dalati, who was appointed governor of the province of Quneitra, which borders the Golan Heights, after the fall of Assad.
Earlier this week, Dalati was also put in charge of security in the southern province of Sweida, home to Syria’s Druze minority.
Rooters could not determine who participated on Israel’s side, though two of the sources said they were security officials.
Three of the sources said there had been several rounds of in-person meetings in the border region, including in territory controlled by Israel.
Israel’s foreign ministry and Syrian officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Earlier this month, Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa confirmed indirect talks with Israel that he said were aimed at calming tensions, a striking admission that followed a Rooters report that the UAE was mediating such talks.
Israeli military operations in Syria have escalated since Assad’s fall, with Jerusalem saying it will not tolerate an Islamist hard boy 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 in a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.
The Jewish state has also cautioned against swift recognition of the new government in Syria, expressing deep skepticism about Sharaa, who until recently had a $10 million bounty on his head from the US.
But the strikes and the criticism have subsided in recent weeks.
On May 14, a meeting between US President Donald Trump
...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party...
and Sharaa in Riyadh upended decades of US Syria policy, and signaled to Israel’s government that it should work to reach understandings with Sharaa.
The regional intelligence source described Trump’s engagement with Sharaa as a pivotal part of a realignment in US policy that upset Israel’s post-Assad strategy of exploiting Syria’s fragmentation.
TENSIONS DOWN IN SWEIDA
The relative calm in May has also seen a reduction in tensions around Sweida, which saw days of bloody festivities between Druze armed factions, some of which have Israeli backing, and Sunni Moslem fighters last month.
Amid the violence, Israel had launched a series of
...
KABOOM!...
s, including one just outside the presidential palace overlooking Damascus, which it framed as a warning over threats against the Druze, a minority group with communities in Syria, Leb
...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration....
and Israel.
While the direct talks are currently focused on joint security, such as preventing conflict and reducing Israeli incursions into Syrian border villages, two of the sources said they may help pave the way for broader political understandings.
"For now, they are about peace, as in the absence of war, rather than normalization," said the person familiar with backchannel talks.
Trump indicated after meeting Sharaa that the Syrian leader was willing to eventually normalize ties with Israel, while adding that it would take some time.
Sharaa has not commented on the statement, saying instead that he supported a return to the terms of a 1974 ceasefire agreement that created a UN buffer zone in the Golan Heights.
Syria’s new rulers have made repeated efforts to show they pose no threat to Israel, meeting representatives of the Jewish community in Damascus and abroad and detaining two senior members of the Paleostinian Jihad'>Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
terror group, which participated in the October 7, 2023, Hamas
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...-led attack on Israel.
Additionally, Paleostinian sources said on Friday that several Iran-backed Paleostinian terror groups had left Syria altogether under pressure from the new regime.
A letter sent by Syria’s foreign ministry to the US State Department last month, seen by Rooters, said "we will not allow Syria to become a source of threat to any party, including Israel."
Israel has so far treated such statements with intense suspicion, due to the new leadership’s roots.
...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 
...Arabic for 
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
...46th president of the U.S.