Roughly a week after former President Bashar al-Assad fled the country in December 2024, the Israeli parliament voted to expand illegal settlements in Syria — a move that violates international law. Currently, over 31,000 Israeli settlers reside in the occupied Golan region.
Under President al-Sharaa, Syria has expressed a willingness to seek peace with Israel and adhere to the 1974 ceasefire agreement. However, on December 8 — the day Assad fled to Moscow — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the ceasefire agreement null and void.
Israel has since launched repeated attacks on Syria, destroying much of its military infrastructure and seizing territory near the Golan border.
In any new non-aggression deal, Syria is expected to demand that Israel withdraw from the areas it newly occupied. However, reports indicate that the Golan Heights have not yet been directly addressed in these negotiations.
In recent days, Israeli officials have voiced openness to a deal, and Netanyahu has reportedly asked U.S. Special Envoy Tom Barrack to help mediate the process.
The talks are reportedly being led on the Israeli side by Tzachi Hanegbi, head of Israel’s National Security Council. Senior Israeli officials told The Times of Israel that the negotiations — which include U.S. participation — are now in their “advanced stages.”
Sources close to al-Sharaa have reportedly called for an end to Israeli military aggression without necessarily requiring full normalization, according to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.
While many Syrians remain deeply concerned about Israel’s expanding occupation of the Golan Heights, it remains unclear whether al-Sharaa’s government will make a formal demand for the full return of occupied territory.
What seems more certain is that Syria will likely insist on an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan proper and from the newly occupied zones taken in the past year.
Israel has also warned Syria’s new leadership not to deploy troops south of Damascus, a region close to the Israeli border.
Further complicating matters, Israel has been accused of inflaming sectarian tensions in the area by threatening to intervene militarily to "protect the Syrian Druze" community — amid rising clashes between pro-government forces and minority Druze groups.
Although parts of the Druze population remain skeptical of the new Syrian government, many have condemned Israel’s threats as a political ploy to sow division within Syria.
Netanyahu is reportedly pushing for a security agreement — a revised version of the 1974 ceasefire — as a step toward a broader peace framework with Syria.
According to Axios, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack has described the Israel-Syria conflict as “solvable” and suggested that both sides begin with a non-aggression pact.
However, Israel’s continued occupation of the Golan remains a highly sensitive issue.