ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – High-level Syrian and Israeli delegations held a US-mediated meeting on Monday to resume negotiations over a security arrangement, amid ongoing Israeli incursions into Syrian territory, Syrian state media reported. 

The Syrian delegation is headed by Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani and Intelligence Chief Hussein al-Salameh, while the Israeli side has formed a new negotiating team to handle talks with Damascus, appointing Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter to lead the team.

A Syrian government source told state media that the talks will focus on reactivating the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. 

The agreement established a buffer zone between the two countries and was signed following a battle to establish a ceasefire and limit military mobilization on both sides. Israel claims that, with the fall of the Assad regime, the agreement is considered void until the restoration of order in Syria.

The two parties are reportedly set to convene in Paris to continue negotiations on a new security agreement, mediated by US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack. The meeting marks the fifth round of talks and the first meeting in two months, according to sources cited by US news website Axios, including an Israeli official.

Another focal point will be the withdrawal of Israeli forces to their former positions before the overthrow of the Baathist regime in December 2024, the Syrian source added.

Since the new authorities in Damascus toppled Bashar al-Assad in December last year, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli forces to complete the takeover of the 1974 buffer zone in the Golan Heights, separating the two states, claiming that the 1974 Disengagement Agreement was void until order was restored in Syria.

Israel has launched repeated incursions in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and southwest Syria’s Quneitra countryside, conducting arrest sprees, raids, and setting up checkpoints.

It has also repeatedly launched numerous airstrikes against the country, nominally to destroy weapons caches and protect the minority Druze community that has been the target of sectarian massacres at the hands of Syrian government and government-affiliated forces.

The resumption of dialogue was a “direct result” of the US President Donald Trump’s request to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Monday, according to the Axios source. After his meeting with the premier, Trump told reporters that he is confident Israel and Syria “will get along.”