By Leila Hilal
Abstract: Syria's interim authorities have become embroiled in high-stakes negotiations with Israel, mediated by the United States. The channel is raising serious concerns over Syria's sovereignty and a peaceful state transition. Syrian interim authorities should put greater priority on renewing the transitional process and position Syria toward a foreign policy approach that promotes greater independence and accountability.
Citation: Hilal, Leila, 2025. “Syria’s Interim Authorities Risk Sovereignty in Talks with Israel,” Security in Context Policy Brief 25-01. September 2025, Security in Context.
This summer Syria’s interim authorities took the rare step of entering direct, high-level negotiations with Israel. In a luxury hotel suite in Paris, interim foreign minister Ahmad al-Shibani met with Israeli minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s trusted Washington liaison and lead orchestrator of the Abraham Accords during the first Trump administration. Trump’s special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, a former registered lobbyist for the UAE and champion of Arab normalization with Israel, mediated the talks. Upon conclusion of the four-hour meeting, Barrack tweeted that the meeting achieved “dialogue and de-escalation” and said talks would continue. Shibani and an Israeli delegation met again in Paris on August 19 without the presence of the US-envoy.
Outcomes and intentions surrounding the shadowy engagement remain opaque. While prior to the meeting, Syrian interim authority president, Ahmed al-Sharaa deflected negotiating an Abraham Accord-styled agreement and has maintained that the US-mediated high-level channel is focused on deconfliction and affirming Syrian territorial integrity. Sharaa has centralized Syrian-Israeli engagement to Shibani and his brother, Maher al-Sharaa, and has yet to articulate a clear policy horizon beyond affirmation of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement that Israel breached within hours of Bashar al-Assad’s fall.
Background
Shibani had been in back-channel security talks with Israel under Turkish sponsorship. The high-level public talks in Paris are taking place against increasingly threatening Israeli intervention in the country and pressure to formally normalize relations with Israel. The high-stakes process presents a strategic risk to Syrian sovereignty and foreclosing a human rights and justice-based state transition.
Following Assad’s departure, Israel unleashed over 600 airstrikes decimating Syria’s military capacity and invaded the disengagement lines along the occupied Golan Heights, advancing within 25 km/15.5 miles of Damascus and embedding ground forces in the southern provinces of Quneitra, Deraa, and Sweida.
Israeli forces operated across Quneitra and Deraa with war tactics resembling annexation patterns in the West Bank and Lebanon. Ground forces deployed armored vehicles and tanks to displace entire villages, confiscate lands and homes, and uproot crops. When residents resist Israeli takeover, they were attacked by aerial bombardments, missile attacks, and gunfire. In one such instance in Koya, Deraa, Israeli soldiers killed seven civilians, while detaining and beating activists and journalists attempting to document operations. Israel has also pushed back UN disengagement observer force operating in the separation areas per Israeli-Syrian agreement for 50 years, erecting the Israeli flag on watch towers.
In response to Sharaa’s attempt to take control of Sweida and sectarian-driven attacks and sieges on Druze communities in July, Israel bombed the Ministry of Defense headquarters in central Damascus, killing three civilians and injuring 34.
Netanyahu declared Israel’s escalation a “clear policy: demilitarization of the region to the south of Damascus” and “protecting the brothers of our brothers the Druse,” with multiple officials stating that Israel would remainSyria indefinitely.
Weighing Strategies
Sharaa may be calculating that there is more to gain than lose in his pragmatic response to the US-envoy’s pressure to move toward normalization. Sharaa understandably wants to mobilize international support for Syria’s economic recovery, particularly garnering US congressional approval for repealing Caesar Act sanctions. Barrack has also backed Sharaa’s bids for securing pledges for foreign infrastructure investments.
Sharaa demonstrated a willingness to accommodate the Jewish state’s interests early on: allowing internal Mossad operations, distancing Syria from the “resistance axis,” and failing to take a hard position on the genocide. Incapable of mounting any substantial military operation against Israeli interference, Sharaa has still refrained from any symbolic military defensive action and limited condemnation of Israeli interference.
In entering the US-mediated channel with Israel, Sharaa has opened himself to criticism of taking his assumed strategic calculus a step too far. The Syrian interim government is too legally, diplomatically and politically weak to enter into any internationally enforceable agreements. Without international recognition of the interim authority as Syria’s government and lacking effective control, Sharaa lacks the power to negotiate new territorial arrangements with Israel. That means bBeyond asking Israel to respect the existing 1974 agreement and Syria’s territorial integrity, further negotiations risk legitimating Netanyahu’s ambition to settle a so-called demilitarized corridor across southern Syria and rendering Syrian displacement and losses permanent.
Indeed it would be shortsighted to believe that appeals for stability could appeal to Netanyahu’s aims to “remake the Middle East,” which he directly related to Israel’s takeover of the disengagement zone while atop the Syrian side of Mount Herman. Scholars have debated whether Israel has become a hegemon in the region, but its strategy is not to balance power for stability or counter extremism. Rather, Netanyahu’s multi-front war is based on wielding control through violent hostility. Netanyahu’s far-right government is using its unmatched – and unchallenged – military might and US-capture to sow divisions, weaken central governments, and leave bordering Arab states vulnerable.
The White House has criticized and sought to contain Israel’s attacks on Damascus; however, the past two years have demonstrated the limits of aligning with the US. Refusing to use its leverage to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and expanded regional war, US policymakers, including Trump’s White House, show a structural inability to constrain Israeli atrocities or counter Netanyahu’s determination to keep neighboring states fragmented and vulnerable.
Sharaa’s closed circle of negotiators is unpractised at high-stakes geopolitical talks, and ill-equipped to negotiate with Israel or counter high-powered and behind-the-scenes forces without policy experts or negotiation strategists. Any successful governance modelling Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS) achieved in previously opposition-held Idlib does not translate into capacity to manage asymmetrical, adversarial negotiations. Israel is a highly manipulative negotiator, practiced at using talks to buy time to create facts on the ground. Israel deploys its vast, ministerial-level rhetorical machine to undermine the weaker party and use negotiations to spin outcomes that create a fait accompli. Israeli media and right-wing agitators used the optics of the first direct talk to claim US backing for a demilitarized south and autonomous Druze zone.
The Syrian foreign ministry acknowledged high-level talks for the first time after Shibani’s second meeting with Dermer, reaffirming Syria’s territorial unity and denying reports that Sharaa and Netanyahu would meet in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September. Sharaa engaged Arabic media repeating his rejection of a normalization peace deal with Israel and his limited interest in a nonaggression deal. Israel subsequently conducted its deepest incursions into Syria by air and land, killing at least 6 uniformed forces near Kisweh in the Damascus periphery.
A Path Forward
Given Sharaa’s approach, the limitations of US mediation, and regional pressures to normalize, it is unlikely that high-level with Israel engagement will end its actions to ethnically fragment Syria and formalize its colonization of Syrian and Arab territory. Shibani’s recent security cooperation agreement with Turkey and outreach to the Kremlin may inflame foreign policy tensions with Israel and sectarian agitation across Syria.
The interim government has generally prioritized external approvals from Western and other Israeli-aligned forces while pursuing a policy of domestic power consolidation and internal institutional control at the expense of inclusive political participation. Sharaa’s centralizing governance patterns has, however, not translated into effective security control. Instead, these efforts undermine the goodwill he has in part relied on to attract the return of Syrian business capacities and bolster European approval and possible investments.
To avoid increasing sectarian fragmentation and loss of control, Sharaa would be better advised to turn inwards. He should work with key constituencies to strengthen mechanisms for national unity, including reinvigorating an internal political track based in coalition building and inclusive planning for a renewed constitutional and comprehensive transitional justice.
Sharaa should also broaden Syrian foreign relations to include Global South countries. Building relationships with BRICS founding countries, Latin America’s Mercusor, and unions like The Hague Group, which is pressing for Israeli accountability, would align Syria closer to countries that stand for sovereignty and territorial integrity. It would bring Syria’s foreign policy closer to the values underpinning Syria’s revolutionary transition and balance Syria’s dependence on foreign countries that threaten internal coherence and territorial control. Broadening alliances could potentially create more market and trade opportunities.
Conclusion
Israel’s current strategic posture is based on sustaining conflict and disorder; and ignoring Syrian sovereignty and international order. It does not create openings for Syria’s cohesion and state transition,and risks countenancing the genocide of Palestinians. For Syria to protect its territorial integrity and political independence, its leadership must avoid concessions that deepen fragmentation and instead pursue a more independent foreign policy grounded in accountability, international law, and internal reconciliation. If the current interim government is too embroiled to embark on this path, the next iteration may carry it forward.
Leila Hilal is a Security in Context senior researcher and a former adviser to Palestinian negotiators.
