Negotiations on a security agreement between Israel and Syria are set to resume Monday in Paris, an Israeli official has confirmed. Talks were frozen about two months ago but the resumption of talks was agreed upon in a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Journalist Barak Ravid first reported the planned resumption of negotiations.
Israel’s delegation will include Netanyahu’s military secretary and nominee for Mossad chief Roman Gofman, Israeli Ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter, and Acting National Security Council head Gil Reich. Netanyahu assigned them to lead the talks with divided responsibilities: Gofman on security issues, Leiter on U.S. relations, and Reich on diplomacy and coordination. Notably, the Israeli team will have no formal head of delegation.
From the Syrian side, Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani will participate, with U.S. envoy Tom Barrack serving as mediator.
1 View gallery
Syrian leader Ahmed al‑Sharaa and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
( Photos: Alex Kolomoisky, Mehmet Ali Ozcan / Anadolu via AFP, Menahem Kahana/AFP)
After his meeting with Trump, Netanyahu said he wants a security agreement with Syria that “preserves the border and guarantees the safety of Druze and Christian communities in Syria.” Trump expressed confidence that Netanyahu and Syrian leader Ahmed al‑Sharaa will “get along,” praising al‑Sharaa as “a tough guy”—a quality Trump said is necessary in the region.
In the past year, al‑Sharaa and al-Shaibani have repeatedly criticized Israel’s actions. At the Doha Forum in early December, al‑Sharaa accused Israel of exporting its crises to other countries to distract from what he called “the massacre in Gaza,” and claimed that since Syria’s “liberation,” it has sent positive messages of regional stability but was met with “extreme violence” including, he said, more than 1,000 air strikes and 400 incursions into Syrian territory.
Al‑Sharaa has said Syria is working with influential countries worldwide to pressure Israel to withdraw from territories it occupied after December 8, 2024, and insists that Damascus expects Israel to honor the 1974 disengagement agreement. He argues that any future deal must safeguard Syria’s interests.