Syria's interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa met with a US delegation lead by the new head of the US military's Central Command in the Syrian capital Damascus on September 12, 2025. - / AFP
President Ahmed al-Sharaa said Friday, September 12 that Syria was negotiating with Israel to reach a security agreement that would see Israel leave areas it occupied after the December overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. As Islamist-led forces toppled Assad on December 8, Israel deployed troops to the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights which has separated Israeli and Syrian forces since an armistice that followed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
Israel has also launched hundreds of air strikes on targets in Syria and carried out incursions deeper into the south. Syria's new authorities have not responded to the attacks.
"We are now in a state of negotiations and dialogue on the issue of a security agreement," Sharaa said in an interview with state television channel Alekhbariah. He said that Israel believed that Syria had "quit" the 1974 disengagement agreement after Assad's fall, "even though Syria, from the first moment, expressed its commitment" to the accord. "Now, negotiations are underway on a security agreement to return Israel to where it was before December 8," Sharaa said. Israel and Syria have no diplomatic relations, with the two countries technically at war since 1948.
