New Syria leader, in US, plays down Israel normalization

NN ONLINE:

Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, visiting New York for the UN General Assembly, voiced hope Monday for a security deal that eases tensions with Israel but he played down the prospect of recognition.

Sharaa, a former jihadist whose forces toppled longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December, met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and later will deliver the first address in decades by a Syrian leader to the General Assembly.

Syrian officials have set a goal of reaching military and security agreements by the end of the year with Israel, whose military has repeatedly battered its neighbor and longtime adversary in the chaos since Assad’s fall.

“I hope that that will lead us to an agreement that will keep the sovereignty of Syria and also resolve some of the security fears of Israel,” Sharaa told the Concordia summit at a New York hotel on the sidelines of the UN summit.

But he balked when asked if Syria would join the so-called Abraham Accords, in which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalized relations with Israel in 2020. “Syria is different as those that are part of the Abraham Accords are not Israel’s neighbors. Syria has been subjected to more than 1,000 Israeli raids, strikes and incursions from the Golan Heights into Syria,” he said.

He voiced doubts about trusting Israel, questioning whether it sought to expand in Syria and charging that Israel has violated peace agreements with two other neighbors, Egypt and Jordan.”There is also huge anger over what’s going on in Gaza, not only in Syria but in the entire world, and of course this impacts our position on Israel,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that there was a new window of possibility for peace with both Syria and Lebanon after an Israeli military campaign devastated Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militant movement that was close to Assad.

Sharaa met in May in Riyadh with US President Donald Trump, who took the advice of Saudi Arabia and Turkey to lift Assad-era sanctions on Syria, despite Israeli misgivings. Sharaa hailed Trump’s move and called on the US Congress to fully lift sanctions, which “put a burden on people who have already suffered from the former regime’s oppression.”

Rubio, in his meeting with Sharaa, discussed Syria’s relations with Israel and called on the country to seize the chance to “build a stable and sovereign nation,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.