Syria not demanding Israel hand over Golan in security talks, FM says

Negotiations between Israel and Syria are limited to possible withdrawal from buffer zone seized in 2024, Syrian foreign minister says.

By World Israel News Staff

Syria is not demanding that Israel withdraw from any part of the Golan Heights that it held prior to December 2024 as a condition for reaching a new security agreement, the regime’s foreign minister said in Munich, Germany, over the weekend.

On Saturday, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani spoke at the Munich Security Conference, during which he responded to questions regarding the ongoing talks between Damascus and Jerusalem aimed at reaching a new security arrangement on the Israeli-Syrian frontier.

Al-Shaibani said that in the current talks, Syria’s territorial demands are limited to areas in the buffer zone between the two countries that the IDF has occupied since the ouster of the Assad regime in December 2024.

Syria’s demands at this time, al-Shaibani emphasized, are focused on “the withdrawal of Israel” from the buffer zone, “not from the Golan Heights.”

The Syrian foreign minister added that Israel’s presence in the Golan Heights “is another issue.”

Since 1967, Damascus has demanded that Israel return the Golan Heights and has rejected the annexation of the strategic plateau in 1981.

During negotiations with Israel in the 1990s aimed at reaching a permanent peace agreement, Syria stated that a deal must include the return of the Golan.

However, the new regime agreed last year to enter into talks with Israel for a more limited agreement, without Israeli concessions related to the territory it held prior to December 8, 2024.

Instead, Syria has said only that Israel must return to the pre-December 2024 lines and halt IDF activity in Syrian territory.

Israel must “respect the security of Syria and withdraw from these territories,” al-Shaibani said at the conference.

“These negotiations will certainly not lead to forcing an acceptance of the fait accompli imposed by Israel in southern Syria.”

“The end of these negotiations will be the withdrawal of Israel from the areas where it advanced” after the fall of the Assad regime and would mark an end to Israel “interfering in Syria’s internal affairs.”