July 10, 2025 | Foreign Policy
Israel and Syria Should Prioritize Security Cooperation
Pushing too hard for a peace deal could come at the expense of more pragmatic action against shared threats.
July 10, 2025 | Foreign Policy
Israel and Syria Should Prioritize Security Cooperation
Pushing too hard for a peace deal could come at the expense of more pragmatic action against shared threats.
Excerpt
“I want to swim in Lake Tiberias,” then-Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad told U.S. President Bill Clinton in March 2000, just months before his death. It was a striking remark during the final stretch of Israeli-Syrian peace talks—negotiations that had once inspired optimism in Washington and Jerusalem. Israel had signaled a willingness to withdraw from the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau it captured in 1967, but balked at allowing Syrian access to Lake Tiberias (also known as the Sea of Galilee). In the end, the talks collapsed.
Now, U.S. President Donald Trump has picked up where Clinton left off, pushing Syria and Israel toward peace negotiations. However, this time, it is not an Assad at the table; it is Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former militant leader whose forces overthrew Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
Ahmad Sharawi is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on Middle East affairs and the Levant.