Syria says meeting with Israeli officials sought to ‘contain escalation’

Israel launched strikes this month on Damascus and the Druze-majority Sweida province, presenting itself as a defender of the minority group — though many see this as a pretext for pushing Syrian government forces further from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The Syrian diplomatic source told state television on Saturday that the Paris meeting “brought together a delegation from the foreign ministry and the general intelligence service with the Israeli side”, and addressed “recent security developments and attempts to contain the escalation in southern Syria”.

On Thursday, US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack had said he held talks with unspecified Syrian and Israeli officials in Paris.

A senior diplomat had previously told AFP that Barrack would be facilitating talks between Damascus’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.

According to the source cited by state TV, the meeting “addressed the possibility of reactivating the disengagement agreement with international guarantees, while demanding the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from points where they recently advanced”.

After the overthrow of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel occupied a UN-patrolled buffer zone that used to separate the countries’ forces in the strategic Golan Heights.

It has since conducted incursions deeper into southern Syria, demanding the area’s total demilitarisation.

Damascus has previously confirmed holding indirect contacts with Israel seeking a return to the 1974 disengagement agreement that created the buffer zone.

The Paris meeting “did not result in any final agreements but rather represented initial consultations that aimed to reduce tensions and reopen communication channels in light of the ongoing escalation since early December”, the diplomatic source said.

“Sweida and its people are an integral part of the Syrian state,” the delegation said, according to the source.

More meetings were planned, the source said, adding that the Syrian side emphasised that the country’s unity and sovereignty were non-negotiable.

Syrian and Israeli officials had previously met in Baku on July 12, according to a diplomatic source in Damascus, coinciding with a visit to Azerbaijan by Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The two countries have technically been at war since 1948, and Israel has occupied the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria, since 1967.

After Assad’s ouster, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes in Syria, violating the country’s sovereignty in what it said was an effort to stop weapons from falling into the hands of the new Islamist authorities.