Israel said Monday it is “interested” in striking peace agreements with neighbouring Lebanon and Syria, a potentially historic shift in the region after decades of war and animosity.
With Syria under a new leadership after the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement weakened, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told journalists his government wanted more normalisation agreements with Arab countries.
“Israel is interested in expanding the Abraham Accords circle of peace and normalisation,” Saar said of the US-brokered deals that Israel signed in 2020 with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco.
“We have an interest in adding countries — Syria and Lebanon, our neighbours — to the circle of peace and normalisation while safeguarding Israel’s essential and security interests,” Saar told a news conference in Jerusalem alongside his Austrian counterpart Beate Meinl-Reisinger.
Control of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights has long been a source of tension between Israel and Syria, which are technically still at war.
Saar insisted that the strategic plateau, which Israel seized in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognised by the United Nations, “will remain part of the State of Israel” under any future peace agreement.
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Following Assad’s overthrow in December, Israel moved forces into the UN-patrolled demilitarised zone in the Golan, and has carried out hundreds of strikes against military targets in Syria.
In Lebanon, the clout of militant group Hezbollah has diminished after it had emerged bruised from a conflict with Israel last year, fuelled by Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Israel, however, has kept up strikes against Hezbollah despite a November ceasefire.
There was no immediate response from Lebanese or Syrian officials to Saar’s remarks.
The latest push for peace comes after a 12-day war between Israel and Iran, which ended last week, and as pressure rose on the Israeli government to end its offensive in the Gaza Strip, prompted by Hamas’s deadly attack in October 2023.
On Sunday, a senior US diplomat in the region said the Iran-Israel ceasefire could pave the way for a new Middle East.
“What just happened between Israel and Iran is an opportunity for all of us to say: ‘Time out. Let’s create a new road,” said Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey who is also a special envoy to Syria.
“The Middle East is ready to have a new dialogue, people are tired of the same old story,” he told Turkey’s Anadolu state news agency.
PunchNewspaper
