Middle East | Reconciliation with the Syrian neighbor to the north

The significance of the Golan Heights is best understood when standing down in Tiberias by the waters of the Sea of ​​Galilee, looking into the distance at the steep hill that rises just beyond the other shore. Anyone standing up there with weapons and binoculars can fire on a large part of northern Israel.

This area has been known to the world as the Golan Heights since 1967: After the Egyptian government closed the Strait of Tiran in the Red Sea to Israeli ships, the Israeli military launched an attack on Egyptian air bases on June 5, 1967. At the end of the Six-Day War, Israel controlled East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights.

Should they be returned to Syria in exchange for a peace treaty ? This question has been debated repeatedly since the 1990s, and now, quite surprisingly, it has once again risen to the top of the agenda. In May, US President Donald Trump met with the new Syrian President, Ahmad al-Sharaa, in Saudi Arabia and urged him to make peace with Israel.

At the end of June, several Israeli media outlets reported that Israeli representatives had spoken directly with al-Sharaa's envoy. On Monday, the Ynet news portal reported that National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi had met directly with al-Sharaa in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In Israel, but also among Trump's supporters in the US , this has fueled the imagination: a peace agreement is possible, commented conservative Israeli and American media alike. Trump has been repeatedly hailed as a peacemaker and declared that Syria would be the next country to join the "Abraham Accords."

This is an agreement concluded in September 2020 between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain through Trump's mediation, which normalized relations between the two Arab states on the one hand and Israel on the other.

However, the UAE and Bahrain not only never declared war on Israel, but had even maintained contacts with Israel for many years. Syria and Israel, on the other hand, have fought several bloody wars. According to the United Nations, Syria has also hosted around 586,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants, of whom 438,000 were still in the civil war-torn country at the end of 2023.

Accordingly, Israeli diplomats are now intensively engaged in enhanced expectation management: "Anyone who hopes to soon be able to eat falafel in Damascus is completely stupid," Ynet quoted an anonymous source in the Foreign Ministry as saying. The only thing at stake is the conclusion of a security agreement. Officially, neither the Israeli nor the Syrian Foreign Ministry is saying anything; they learned a painful lesson in 1991, says an Israeli diplomat who did not wish to be named.

At that time, Israel, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinians met in Madrid for peace talks at the invitation of Spain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. However, the public nature of the conference led all sides to compete with each other with increasingly complex demands in order to present themselves as favorably as possible. Less than two years later, a completely surprised public on both sides learned that the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had agreed to the Oslo Accords after months of secret negotiations.

Even though the treaties are now considered by many to have failed, the negotiating style is now seen as the best way forward: it is better to negotiate outside of public attention, because day-to-day politics crushes everything that gets in its way.

And that's how things are shaping up now: Defense Minister Israel Katz was the first to speak out, saying that under no circumstances will the Golan Heights be vacated. However, this area was and remains the one point on which agreement must be reached in order to even consider a peace agreement. A public consensus and a solution that is acceptable even to those who do not want to join this consensus are needed.

With the change of power in Syria, both governments share a number of interests: Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are a threat to both. Al-Sharaa repeatedly emphasizes in interviews that he wants a Syria that lives at peace with its neighbors and is free from external influences. These words are very popular in Israel: With the departure of the al-Assad family to Moscow and the fall of their regime, a fundamental element in the threat scenario has disappeared: The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has lost a loyal supporter and a base.

Al-Sharaa himself came to power at the head of an Islamist militia that was at times loyal to al-Qaeda and maintained contacts with the terrorist group "Islamic State." It remains unclear how much of this was strategy and how much genuine conviction. The new president grew up in Mezzeh, a secular district of Damascus. His father, Hussein Ali Al-Sharaa, is an Arab nationalist; publications indicate that, at least in the 1970s, he was a fervent supporter of the ideology of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Thus, the contradictions of Syrian society are united in one family.

What remains from the Assad era is the emotional significance of the Golan Heights: Its strategic importance has diminished significantly; now, groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis possess technologically advanced, long-range missiles. But for Israeli right-wingers, the region has become part of the settlement project ; 31,000 Israelis now live here in settlements built illegally under international law.

For many Syrians, however, the Golan Heights is an integral part of the country, and bathing in the Sea of ​​Galilee is a dream, one that Al-Sharaa also plays with: During the civil war, he called himself "Al-Jaulani" – a native of the Golan Heights. Although he was born in Riyadh, his family allegedly originates from there.