Accentuating the positive

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 29 September 2025

"You’ve got to accentuate the positive” ran the lyrics of the hit song of 1945, continuing with the equally sound advice: “eliminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative.”

There seemed to be little positive in the TV announcement by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on September 21, officially recognizing the “State of Palestine.” Starmer entirely sidestepped the fact, obvious to most, including Hamas, that recognition of a Palestinian state represented a clear reward to Hamas for its barbarous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

What is more, he was turning his back on the well-established principle, dating back to the Thatcher-Reagan era, that terrorists should never benefit from committing acts of violence. It simply encourages further atrocities. Starmer’s action will certainly have convinced Hamas and like-minded jihadist groups that terrorism produces results.

Starmer twisted his recognition of Palestinian statehood to fit his agenda.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “Hamas is a ruthless terrorist organization. Advocating for a genuine two-state resolution stands in stark contrast to their malevolent aspirations. Therefore, we assert that this resolution is not a concession to Hamas; it signifies that Hamas has no future, no role in governance, and no role in security.”

The state that Starmer was recognizing, together with the clutch of nations that had agreed on a concerted recognition initiative, is split between two areas, one of which was still ruled by a proscribed terrorist organization. Starmer’s assertion that Hamas would be barred from any future role in Gaza’s governance contained no indication of how this was to be brought about.

            An obvious conclusion is that he is leaving Israel to achieve it through military action. The IDF’s prosecution of the war in Gaza has often been described by UK spokespeople as “disproportionate.” There was, significantly, no reference to this in Starmer’s statement.

However, all is not as absolutely negative as it may first appear. Starmer entertained Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in Downing Street on September 8. Was a series of concessions wrung out of the PA leader at that meeting?

On September 23, two days after Starmer’s recognition statement, media reports indicated that Starmer, working with France and other Western allies, is making his recognition of a Palestinian state conditional on several “concrete, verifiable, and measurable commitments” from the PA, and that Britain would desist from opening full diplomatic relations until they are met. Foremost is that the PA must end its notorious “pay for slay” policy.

For some 30 years, the PA has been providing cash payments to the families of two distinct categories: prisoners in Israeli custody, and “martyrs” (i.e., those killed while engaged in terrorist activities). The worse the atrocity committed, the greater the payment.

The sum dispersed annually amounts to about $300 million, sourced from the PA’s general budget, which receives tax revenues collected by Israel on its behalf, and foreign aid from donor countries.

In February 2025, under pressure from the US, Abbas signed a decree supposedly ending this “pay for slay” policy. But the reform was merely cosmetic. Its effect was to maintain the payments precisely as before, but to drop the connection to imprisonment or martyrdom. In the future, they were to be labeled welfare support. In fact, they are the same payments, to the same beneficiaries, but simply rebranded.

The demand from Starmer and other Palestine recognition partners was specific. The PA must genuinely end payments to families of prisoners and so-called martyrs killed in acts of violence against Israelis.

On September 23, Abbas, having been refused a visa to visit the US, addressed the UN via video link.

“The State of Palestine is pursuing a comprehensive reform agenda to strengthen governance, transparency, and the rule of law,” he announced. “This includes… the cancellation of all previous payments to families of prisoners and martyrs, now under international audit by a specialized firm.”

Ending “pay for slay” was not the only concrete commitment that Starmer and others demanded of Abbas. If full diplomatic recognition was to follow the symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood, school curricula needed to be overhauled to remove content judged antisemitic or incitement to violence. Additionally, steps are needed to implement political reforms, most notably holding overdue Palestinian elections, and excluding Hamas from future PA leadership roles.

The possible incompatibility between the last two requirements may not have struck Starmer and his co-recognitionists, but it has certainly been exercising Abbas and the PA leadership for at least 15 years. The likely result of elections would have been an overwhelming victory for Hamas and the overthrow of the Fatah-led PA and its leader.

The last major poll of Palestinian opinion, conducted in May 2025, revealed support for Hamas at around 40% among Palestinians overall, with support higher in Gaza than in the West Bank. Support for Fatah is about 20%. About 81% of all Palestinians want Abbas to resign. So if free and fair Palestinian elections are held, the strong likelihood is that Hamas or some clone terrorist organization would sweep the board – one negative that needs to be eliminated somehow.

However, Abbas, in his video address to the UN, was all positive. The PA’s reform agenda, he said, “includes the financial system and school curricula in line with UNESCO standards within two years… We also reaffirm our commitment to holding presidential and parliamentary elections within one year after the end of the war, and to drafting a temporary constitution within three months to ensure the transition from authority to statehood.”

These positives have been described by Western officials as “tangible, verifiable, measurable commitments” to test whether the PA could oversee genuine statehood. Nations recognizing a Palestinian state are working together to push through the plans.

Some of them might happen; for example, those ending “pay for slay,” improvements in education, reducing waste, and providing greater transparency in governance. The major political reforms promised by Abbas, though – elections, a new constitution, full PA control in Gaza – are much less likely within the time frame he suggested.

Anyone seeking something positive to accentuate need look no further than Abbas’s closing remarks, however sincere or otherwise one adjudges them.

“I say to the Israeli people: Our future and your future lie in peace. Let the violence and war end. Our generations deserve to live in security and freedom, so that the peoples of our region may live in lasting peace and good neighborliness. On this occasion, I wish all Jews around the world a happy New Year on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Accentuating the Positive: Mahmoud Abbas's UN address", 29 September 2025:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-868883

Published in Eurasia Review, 3 October 2025:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/03102025-accentuating-the-positive-oped/

Disarming Hezbollah

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 22 September 2025

On August 5, the Lebanese government, under pressure from the US as well as from Israeli strikes, ordered the military to draw up plans to disarm all independent militias, including Hezbollah’s, by the end of the year.

It took a full month, but at a cabinet meeting on September 5, Rodolphe Haykal, the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, presented the government with a plan to ensure that, by the year’s end, weapons would be held only by the Lebanese state. The cabinet authorized the army to begin implementing it immediately.

          Following the cabinet meeting, in an address to journalists, Lebanese Information Minister Paul Morcos said that the details of the army’s plan to disarm militias, including Hezbollah, would remain secret. The cabinet, he said, had decided to keep the specifics of the plan confidential, but that implementation would proceed according to the army’s material and logistical capacities.

A few days later, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi, again without disclosing details of the plan, declared that within three months the army will have fully disarmed Hezbollah in the area nearest the border with Israel – namely the region south of the Litani River.

Despite the emphasis on keeping the plan secret, many details have subsequently become public – either unintentionally or through deliberate leaks. Through various briefings and via press coverage, it emerged that the army’s plan is called “Homeland Shield,” and its objective is to confiscate Hezbollah’s weapons in five phases. The first phase begins south of the Litani River; the second includes the area south of the Awali River.

Subsequently, even more precise details emerged. Homeland Shield is a military road map whose destination is national disarmament. The precise objective is to ensure that by the end of 2025, only the Lebanese army is weaponized.

In phase one, the Lebanese army will focus on the disarmament of armed groups, specifically Hezbollah, in the region south of the Litani River, cooperating with the 47-year-old peacekeeping force UNIFIL, whose mandate is due to be terminated on December 31, 2026.
In phase two, operations will expand northward to include the corridor up to the Awali River, covering the main approach to South Lebanon. The focus in phase three will be on Beirut and its surrounding suburbs.

In phase four, disarmament will pivot to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, an area with key weapons depots and logistical networks for armed groups. The final phase covers the remainder of Lebanon, to ensure the complete nationwide enforcement of the state monopoly on arms.

It has also emerged that the government’s intention is not integration. President Joseph Aoun has clearly rejected the idea of creating a distinct Hezbollah unit within the army, replicating Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which are Iran-backed Shi’ite-led paramilitary groups integrated into Iraq’s security forces.

Instead, he envisions individual Hezbollah fighters joining the Lebanese Armed Forces only if they meet the same criteria as any other applicant – academic qualifications, entrance exams, and training – just like the post–civil war integration of other militia members.
Monthly implementation reports are to be submitted to the cabinet by the army command, but the cabinet and army leadership have decided, citing national security and sectarian sensitivities, that details regarding precise operational procedures will remain confidential.

The Homeland Shield plan is, to put it mildly, controversial. During the cabinet discussions leading to the decision, Shi’ite ministers staged walkouts.

Major Shi’ite political blocs – the bedrock of Lebanese support for Hezbollah – have rejected it. After learning that the cabinet had authorized the army to develop a plan to place all weapons under state control, Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, announced he would defy the order.

“The government of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam committed a grave sin by taking a decision to strip Lebanon of its weapons to resist the Israeli enemy…,” he pronounced. “This decision fully serves Israel’s interest. Therefore, we will treat this decision as if it does not exist.”

Army leaders dwell on the practicalities, emphasizing that full implementation of the plan depends on the necessary resources being provided. They stress the need to minimize the risk of direct internal conflict, and have begun to indicate that the timetable may be flexible depending on political and security developments.

Nevertheless, the program is well under way and the army has taken measurable steps toward implementing the first phase. Thousands of troops have been deployed to the south and, with some external intelligence cooperation (notably from Israel via the US), the army has dismantled hundreds of Hezbollah weapon sites and other infrastructure, with over 500 said to have been demolished.

The government’s firmness in implementing the Homeland Shield plan despite Hezbollah’s initial rejection seems to have resulted in the group shifting ground somewhat. Without retracting its opposition to the government’s plan, Hezbollah has recently called the government’s move an “opportunity” to restore order or “return to wisdom and reason.”

Even this concession, if that is what it is, is conditional on its own demands being met. It has said that before any serious discussion about disarmament can proceed, Israel must cease all military operations in Lebanon (air strikes, cross-border incursions, etc.), withdraw from occupied or disputed hilltop positions in southern Lebanon, and respect the ceasefire.

Hezbollah has, therefore, subtly suggested that it could be open to dialogue with the government about a national defense strategy, provided its preconditions are met. In short, the group rejects disarmament imposed by the government, but indicates it might be acceptable in the context of “national dialogue” about the defense of Lebanon.

Despite Homeland Shield’s hopeful start, many commentators believe it is unlikely to be fully implemented by the end of 2025, or possibly ever. They point to current official statements about the plan that studiously avoid mentioning binding deadlines. Even supportive ministers signal that progress will depend on “available capabilities,” with no fixed timetable for completion.

Another factor militating against a successful outcome is Lebanon’s system of governance, which relies on consensus. In the past, this has effectively given Hezbollah and its allied Shi’ite parties a veto over major reforms. It is true that on this disarmament issue, Aoun and his cabinet seem determined to press ahead, but Lebanon’s delicate political balance is easily disrupted.

Putting speculation aside, however, the five-phase disarmament plan drawn up by the army is actually being implemented. Hezbollah’s military presence is being eliminated from the region south of the Litani, and there is every indication that phase two will follow shortly.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled:  "Disarming Hezbollah:  The five-phase Lebanese plan is actually happening", 22 September 2025:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-868224

Published in Eurasia Review, 3 October 2025:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/26092025-disarming-hezbollah-oped/

France seizes the initiative – again

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 15 September 2025

          For decades French leaders have tried to position France as a prime mover in solving the Israel-Palestinian ​issue. Time and again they have attempted to convene multilateral conferences ​to resolve the question, but despite typically gaining Arab and European support, their initiatives have invariably proved ineffective.

          Ever resilient, France’s President Emmanuel Macron is about to have another try.

A high-level meeting between France and several Arab states is scheduled for September 22 in New York, just before the UN General Assembly opens. This meeting will be co-led by French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  Its primary aim will be to solidify international support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian issue. The conference is timed to coincide with France’s intended recognition of Palestinian statehood.

The meeting will also aim to secure concessions from the Palestinian side for peace, including a permanent ceasefire, the disarmament of Hamas, the reform of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the deployment of a stabilization force in the Strip.

French presidents have aspired to be power brokers in the Middle East ever since France assumed its colonial role there, after the First World War.  Following Israel’s independence in 1948, France emerged as one of its strongest allies in Europe. The close military and political ties binding the two countries culminated in joint operations during the 1956 Suez crisis against Egypt.

Following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, however, France’s then-president, Charles de Gaulle, dramatically changed policy. He condemned Israel as the aggressor, imposed an arms embargo, and reoriented French diplomacy toward the Arab world.

De Gaulle sought influence in the Middle East by trying to act as an independent power broker, balancing the US and the USSR.  In pursuit of this strategy France became a leading European advocate of a pro-Arab – and later pro-Palestinian – stance.

In 1980 France was central in an early European bid to shape a comprehensive peace process – the Venice Declaration, which pushed for Palestinian self-determination.

It is certainly true that while long advocating the creation of a Palestinian state, France has consistently defended Israel’s right to exist in security – though belying the famed logicality of French thought, the possible incompatibility between these two positions has never been acknowledged.  

France’s view of itself as a possible facilitator of an Israel-Palestinian accord has led it into a blind alley on more than one occasion. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was the initiator of a débacle par excellence in 2007-8, when he devised and pushed through the European Union a concept grandiosely titled the “Union for the Mediterranean”.

          In July 2008 he induced more than 40 heads of state, including Israel’s then-prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, to attend a summit in Paris. Nothing of any significance emerged from the meeting, and the Union for the Mediterranean, with its support for the two-state solution, has long since been sucked into the quicksands of history.

 A year later, in August 2009, when it was clear that newly-elected US President Barack Obama was eager to relaunch peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Sarkozy believed he saw an opportunity to get in on the act and offered to host another international conference in order, as he said, to facilitate the peace process.  He went so far as to issue invitations to the PA president and leaders from concerned countries, including Israel, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.  Obama, however, intent on pursuing his own initiative, rejected the overture.

Nothing daunted, in January 2010 as Obama’s efforts to bring the parties to the negotiating table were inching their painful way forward, Sarkozy repeated his offer.  He declared that the resumption of Israel-Palestinian discussions was a French priority, and that a Paris-located international conference would be a positive way to advance the peace process.

Once again France’s attempt to elbow its way into the negotiations was quietly pushed aside.

This nostrum of a Paris-based international conference seems to have become an idée fixe in French thinking.  It reappeared in December 2014, when President François Hollande took the lead in drafting a Security Council resolution outlining proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian final-status deal.

The formula incorporated a two-year timetable for completing negotiations and (one is tempted to remark cela va sans dire – it goes without saying) an international peace conference to take place in Paris.

​Laurent Fabius, France’s then foreign minister, played the same tune, with minor variations, when he visited the Middle East in June 2015 to sell the idea of a French-led initiative to reboot the peace process. ​ 

​And then, finally, on June 3, 2016 Hollande achieved France’s long-held ambition of hosting an international peace conference, and in Paris too.  Attended by representatives of 28 governments and international organizations, though not Israel or the Palestinian Authority, its purpose was to launch a major French peace initiative.  ​It led to a genuine international peace conference, held ​of course in Paris, on January 15, 2017 attended by representatives from about 70 countries , including then-US Secretary of State, John Kerry.

The final communiqué reaffirmed support for a two-state solution and condemned settlement expansion. The occasion was, however, rather like a performance of Hamlet without either the prince or his father’s ghost.  France invited neither Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nor PA president Mahmoud Abbas.

The intention had been to impose global pressure on both to re-enter negotiations on the basis of the recent UN resolution 2334 and the vitally important earlier resolution 242.  Ignored or unrecognized by those present was the glaring incompatibility between the two. While 242 envisaged the creation of new “secure and recognized boundaries” in the West Bank and Jerusalem, 2334 handed the whole territory over to the Palestinians.

 The main positive point emerging from the conference was that “interested participants” resolved to meet again before the end of 2017 to advance the two-state solution.  That meeting never took place, and the whole initiative fizzled out.

The French have a saying: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they are the same).  Here we are in 2025 with France’s current president organizing a broadly based international conference seeking to rally international partners around the two-state solution, and positioning France at the forefront by pledging to recognize the State of Palestine.

The underlying reality, though, remains.  Whatever the French leadership may believe, France is not a principal in the perennial Israel-Palestine issue.  Its opinion, and therefore its influence, has historically counted for little.  That remains as true in 2025 as it always has.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Despite Macron's efforts, France's influence on the Middle East counts for little", 15 September 2025:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-867431

Published in Eurasia Review, 19 September 2025:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/19092025-france-seizes-the-initiative-again-oped/

Tony Blair and the Palestinian issue

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 8 September 2025

On August 27 US President Donald Trump summoned a tight-knit group of advisers to the White House to discuss a comprehensive post-war strategy for Gaza.  Under consideration would be humanitarian aid, governance alternatives to Hamas, and how to facilitate Gaza’s reconstruction.

 Among those invited were Vice-President J D Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Israeli minister Ron Dermer and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.  Eyebrows were raised in political circles across the world when it was revealed that also among those present was Britain’s former prime minister, Sir Tony Blair.

His presence should not have come as such a surprise.   Blair has been closely involved with the Israel-Palestin​ian issue for a quarter of a century.  ​Following an overwhelming electoral victory​ in 1997, he became ​Britain's prime minister​.  In 2000 he offered the UK’s unequivocal support to then-US President Bill Clinton in his efforts to achieve an Israel-Palestinian peace deal at the Camp David Summit.

In 2002 he supported the Roadmap for Peace produced by the Middle East Quartet. The Quartet – comprising the UN, US, EU, and Russia – was set up to coordinate international efforts to achieve Israel–Palestinian peace.  The Roadmap it promoted, proposing a three-phased transition to normalization between Israel and the Arab world, incorporated the establishment of a sovereign, viable, and contiguous Palestinian state alongside Israel.

On the very day that Blair resigned the UK premiership – 27 June 2007 – he was appointed Quartet Representative for the Middle East peace process.  The White House announced that both Israel and the Palestinians had signed up to his appointment.  His mandate was to help the Palestinian Authority (PA) prepare for eventual statehood by establishing the means to run an administration, strengthen the Palestinian economy, and foster a climate of law and order.

He occupied that position for the next eight years, and it is generally held that he did his best. He supported the “state-building plan” of the then-Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, and helped secure donor funding and foreign investment in the West Bank, leading to periods of up to 9% economic growth over 2008–2011. 

He backed infrastructure projects (roads, electricity, water, industrial parks) and supported reforms of Palestinian security forces.  Even so there is no denying that, taken overall, his achievements were underwhelming.  Events were not on his side. ​When he took on the post​, it was only twelve days ​since Hamas, following a brief but violent conflict with Fatah forces, had seized control of the Gaza Strip.  The immediate result was to split the Palestinian people in two, with 2 million living in Gaza. and 3.5 million or more in the West Bank. It also created a political divide between the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank, controlled by the Palestinian Authority under Fatah.  

It was a long time before Blair was able to make meaningful contact with Hamas, but he did play a behind-the-scenes role during the Gaza conflicts of 2012 and 2014, contributing with Egyptian support to ceasefire arrangements between Israel and Hamas.

Despite his best efforts, Blair was of course unable to effect any sort of reconciliation between the unyielding rejectionism of Hamas and the opportunist approach of Fatah.  PA president Mahmoud Abbas, following the strategy initiated by his predecessor Yasser Arafat, continued promoting the idea of a two-state solution to world opinion, while covertly intending to use it as a first step toward overthrowing Israel and eventually taking over the whole of Mandate Palestine.  

The Fatah constitution states as much, although it is rarely if ever referred to by Abbas or other Palestinian leaders in speeches in English: “Palestine is an Arab land, the land of the Palestinian Arab people… Palestine, with its boundaries that existed at the time of the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit…The Palestinian Arab people have a legitimate right to their homeland and have the right to determine their destiny after the liberation of their homeland.”  These founding principles of the Fatah organization leave no room for a two state solution.

Blair, of course, is himself utterly sincere in his belief that a resolution of the interminable dispute is entirely dependent on achieving a sovereign state of Palestine alongside Israel.  But he s​lowly became aware of what the so-called “Palestinian cause” truly was, and now his eyes are fully open.  In an interview with StandTallWithIsrael.com on August 20, Blair said:

“Acceptance both culturally and not just formally of the state of Israel means that the two peoples can live side by side with some sense of equity…True peace can never be achieved through formal agreements alone — it requires a cultural shift, a mutual acceptance of Israel's right to exist, and a transformation within Palestinian leadership and society.”

It was way back in December 2016 that Blair founded the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI).  Globalization is an inevitable process brought about by technological advances, economic interdependence, and the increasing movement of people and information across borders.   TBI’s purpose is to help “countries, their people, and their governments to address some of the most difficult challenges in today’s world.”

Starting with seed funding of some $9 million and a staff of about 221, TBI has developed into the “McKinsey for world leaders,” advising numerous governments on policy, governance, climate, extremism, and technology use.  Today, with a staff of around 1000 and revenues in the region of $150 million, it is operating in more than 45 countries.

A poll commissioned by TBI around July and August 2024 found that only about 7% of Palestinians in Gaza said they wanted Hamas to govern the Strip immediately after the war. Most overwhelmingly preferred a new governance structure.

In a conference in London in October 2024, Blair quoted the results of the poll as he emphasized the urgency of ending the conflict to pave the way for a future that offers security for Israel and self-governance for the population of Gaza.   What is needed, he said, are “intensive diplomatic efforts to create the conditions that will bring the war to an end in a way that provides Israel with the security it needs, and Palestinians in Gaza with a different and better future.” 

Tony Blair is a fresh and positive presence on the scene.  His experience of the Middle East as a whole, and the Israel-Palestinian issue in particular, is unrivalled.  He is totally convinced that mutual recognition and cultural change are prerequisites for true peace and stability in the region, with change in Gaza being pivotal for progress on all fronts.  His will be a voice of moderation and reason in future Trump-led deliberations.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Tony Blair:  a fresh and positive presence on the Palestinian issue", 8 September, 2025:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-866617

Israel and Syria draw closer

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 1 September 2025 

          When Ahmed al-Sharaa – or Mohammad al-Jolani as he was then – swept down with his militia from the north of Syria to oust then President Bashar al Assad, suspicions proliferated in Israel about his true intentions.

          Born in Riyadh in 1982 to a Syrian family from the Golan Heights, al-Sharaa grew up in Damascus. He went to Iraq when the US invaded in 2003, subsequently joined the jihadist group known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and was imprisoned by American forces from 2006 to 2011. When released he returned to Syria, and in 2012 founded the al-Nusra Front. In 2016 he severed ties with al-Qaeda, and rebranded his militia as Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). It was as the leader of HTS that he toppled the Assad regime.

          On the very day that Assad fled from Syria – December 8, 2024 – Sharaa, speaking at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, outlined his vision for Syria's future. He intended, he said, to open a new chapter in his country’s history. Condemning Syria's prior role as a playground for Iranian ambitions, he vowed to protect religious minorities and allow them to practice freely. His aim was to unite the nation, introduce free and impartial elections, and form an inclusive government reflecting the diversity of Syria's population.

          On appointment as Syria’s interim president in January 2025, he formed a transitional government and pledged to draft a new constitution within a few years. To tide the nation over, he produced an interim constitution committing the nation’s governance to unity and inclusivity. It explicitly pledges to maintain freedom of opinion and expression.

          Opinion in Israel was sharply divided as to whether Sharaa’s apparent wholesale adoption of secular, democratic values was genuine or not. Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel in December 2024 strikingly described Sharaa’s administration as wolves in sheep’s clothing. In March Israel Katz, the Defense Minister, labeled Sharaa a “jihadist terrorist from the Al-Qaeda.”

          Israel could not take a chance on the genuineness of Sharaa’s intentions. Assad’s Syria had been used by Iran as a warehouse for high-tech military hardware, and a staging post for its transmission to Hezbollah in Lebanon. That infrastructure and the massive quantities of stored armaments remained on Syria’s soil. Israel felt obligated to downgrade or remove them.

          Within two days of Assad's fall, Israel conducted nearly 500 airstrikes targeting Syrian military weaponry and stockpiles. It destroyed air defense networks, missile systems, naval assets, and chemical weapons stockpiles.

          These actions might have been thought to put Israel and Syria on a direct collision course. The evidence indicates that this was not the case.

           Sharaa visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on April 13. Just a few days later, according to a report by Reuters, the UAE set up a secret mediation back-channel between Syria and Israel. Those participating reportedly included officials from UAE security and Syrian intelligence, and former Israeli intelligence officers.

          Focusing on security and intelligence issues, the main objective was de-escalation, especially in light of Israel’s recent airstrikes.

          Later in May Reuters reported that direct, face-to-face talks between Syrian and Israeli security officials had taken place in the border region.

          Since then direct Israel-Syria contact has expanded significantly. For example officials from the two countries met in Baku, Azerbaijan, on July 12 to de-escalate the situation in Sweida province after Israel’s intervention to protect the Druze, after ancient tribal hostilities had boiled over into armed conflict. On July 31 a further high-level meeting between Syrian and Israeli officials was held in Baku.

          A few days earlier, however, on July 24, the highest-level engagement between Israel and Syria in over 25 years was held in Paris, brokered by the US. On the Israeli side was Strategic Affairs minister Ron Dermer;

from Syria, Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani. The talks focused on de-escalation of tensions and confidence-building measures.

          A month later, on 20 August, news media confirmed that Shaibani had again met with Dermer to discuss regional stability, particularly in southern Syria.
 
          These promising contacts are scheduled to continue. According to Saudi-owned newspaper Independent Arabia, citing “senior Syrian sources”, Israel and Syria are expected to sign a security agreement under US auspices on September 25, aiming to reduce tensions further. Sharaa’s first speech at the UN General Assembly is scheduled for the same day.

The agreement is described as a security arrangement rather than a full peace deal. The US is reportedly trying to facilitate a meeting around that time involving Sharaa, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and possibly US President Donald Trump.

          By then Syria will have held its first parliamentary elections since the fall of Assad. Due to take place between September 15 and 20, these elections promise to be above board. International organizations have been invited to oversee election procedures.

          Being contested are the 210 seats in the People’s Assembly. Of these 70 will be appointed directly by the interim president, while 140 will be filled by local electoral college committees in each province. At least 20% of the members of these committees must be women. Women can also be selected as electoral candidates and elected as members of parliament.

          Women’s rights groups have called for the threshold to be raised to parity in future elections.

          The new assembly will serve for 36 months, during which a permanent constitution is expected to be drafted and preparations made for future democratic national elections.

          These forthcoming elections will not include three provinces: Sweida, Hasaka, and Raqqa. The electoral commission and government authorities have postponed voting in these areas due to ongoing security concerns and lack of full government control. The seats allocated to these provinces will remain vacant until conditions allow for safe and fair elections at a later date.

          For practical reasons the electoral process uses an indirect college system rather than direct voting. There has not been a census in Syria since 2004, and it is accordingly impossible to institute voter registration. As a result, although the rules governing them are more liberal than anything Syria has seen for some time, they place power firmly in Sharaa’s hands. The transitional government is aware that this is a limited, pragmatic solution during a fragile period of rebuilding institutions. It is a notable improvement on the Assad regime’s sham elections, but still far from a fully democratic electoral system.

          Cautious diplomacy will continue to guide Israeli–Syrian relations, while in the background no-one is forgetting US Congressman Cory Mills’s meeting with Sharaa in April during which, Mills reported, Sharaa said that, under the right conditions, Syria could consider joining the Abraham Accords.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Airstrikes, cautious diplomacy: Israel and Syria draw closer", 1 September 2025:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-865815

Published in Eurasia Review, 3 September 2025:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/03092025-israel-and-syria-draw-closer-oped/