Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in an Al Jazeera interview on Sunday that he is working to reach a security arrangement with Israel that could eventually lead to a comprehensive peace agreement.
That’s the good news.
The less good news is that such a peace, he said, would come about “without compromising Syria’s right to the occupied Golan.”
Considering that no Israeli government in the foreseeable future is likely to consider ceding the Golan – especially in view of the endemic chaos and instability in Syria – a peace agreement conditioned on an Israeli withdrawal from the Heights would seem out of reach.
A lot has happened in Syria and the region since Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, and even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flirted in the 1990s and the early 2000s with the idea of letting the Syrians dangle their toes in the Kinneret.
But that does not make Sharaa’s statement insignificant – even if it is one he has made before.
Its significance lies less in the prospect of an imminent Israeli-Syrian peace agreement than in what Sharaa seems willing to contemplate short of one: a security arrangement with Israel that could stabilize the border, reduce the possibility of war, and perhaps create conditions for something more ambitious down the road.
Sharaa’s comments echo words of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun
And in this respect, Sharaa’s comments bear a striking resemblance to those made in Washington last week by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.
Aoun praised a recent framework agreement signed with Israel that he said had as its ultimate objective ending the state of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel forever. He, too, spoke in terms of long-term security arrangements with Israel rather than an immediate, full-fledged peace agreement.
Taken together, the comments point to what could be an emerging regional approach: rather than trying to leap in one fell swoop from decades of hostility to formal peace, move incrementally toward a more stable Middle East by first putting security arrangements in place.
The symbolic significance of this should not be discounted. The leaders of both Lebanon and Syria are no longer talking about war with Israel as some kind of ideological imperative. Rather, they are looking at relations with Israel in practical terms.
For Sharaa to say this on Al Jazeera – Qatar’s mouthpiece long hospitable to Muslim Brotherhood views – is no small thing.
For the Muslim Brotherhood, perpetual conflict with the Jewish state is an ideological principle. Sharaa, by contrast, was talking about security arrangements and, eventually, peace.
Both Sharaa and Aoun have compelling domestic reasons for doing so.
Syria, Lebanon cannot meet their regional goals without Israel
Aoun needs to restore Lebanese sovereignty by weakening Hezbollah. Sharaa needs to consolidate his rule and assert the authority of the central government throughout Syria. Neither can easily accomplish those goals while remaining locked in perpetual confrontation with Israel.
In other words, arrangements with Israel could serve not only to prevent war but also to strengthen the state against armed groups and competing centers of power within it. This does not mean either leader is ready to abandon long-standing territorial claims.
Quite the opposite.
Sharaa stressed that Syria would not compromise its claim to the Golan. It is also clear that the security agreement he has in mind is predicated on a full Israeli withdrawal from the buffer zone the IDF carved out following the fall of Bashar Assad in 2024. Aoun, likewise, has said that Lebanon will not yield “an inch” of Lebanese territory.
Israel, however, is unlikely to withdraw completely from either buffer zone in Syria or Lebanon until it is confident that Sharaa and Aoun have extended their control throughout their countries and can be counted on to prevent either country from backsliding into a situation where its territory can once again be used as a launching pad for attacks on the Jewish state.
And that type of confidence will take years to build.
That gap – between what Syria and Lebanon are demanding now and what Israel is prepared to concede now – is precisely what makes the emerging approach interesting. It suggests that the objective is not to resolve all the outstanding issues at once but to find security arrangements that can reduce the danger of war while giving each side time to build the confidence needed for more far-reaching agreements.
What is being discussed is not full peace but rather a search for arrangements that reduce the possibility of armed conflict without requiring Syria or Lebanon to first surrender territorial claims that remain politically important at home, or for Israel to immediately relinquish security positions that it deems necessary.
Sharaa’s comments about the Golan, therefore, may be directed as much toward his domestic audience as toward Israeli leaders: He can explore an arrangement with Israel while reassuring Syrians that doing so does not mean relinquishing Syria’s claims.
Aoun is attempting a similar balancing act.
And Israel, for its part, has its own immediate security interests. In both Lebanon and Syria, it has carved out buffer zones intended to keep hostile forces away from its border communities. Any agreement that could provide Israel with sufficient security guarantees to alter those arrangements would therefore have to address the threats that led Israel to establish them in the first place.
The coincidence of Sharaa’s remarks and Aoun’s recent language suggests that something broader may be taking shape: a regional diplomatic effort in which Syria and Lebanon are encouraged toward security arrangements with Israel as a way to stabilize borders, strengthen central governments, and marginalize non-state armed actors.
This is a far more modest objective than the sweeping peace agreements. But it may also be a more realistic one.