Axios: Monday’s negotiations between high officials from Israel and Syria in Paris are mediated by the US
Axios reported on Sunday that high-level officials from Israel and Syria will meet, mediated by the United States, to resume negotiations on a new security agreement.
Axios website explained, quoting an Israeli official and another source, that the US administration is exerting pressure on the two sides to reach an agreement aimed at ensuring the stability of security on the border strip between Israel and Syria and opening the way for diplomatic normalization.
According to these sources, high officials from Syria and Israel will meet on Monday in Paris to resume negotiations on a new security agreement, with Washington’s ambassador to Ankara, its special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, taking over the role of mediator in the talks.
The sources explained that the main goal of the talks, which are expected to last two days, is to reach a security agreement that includes the demilitarization of southern Syria and Israel’s withdrawal from the Syrian territories it controlled after the fall of the Assad regime.
It pointed out that the resumption of negotiations comes at the request of US President Donald Trump, during his meeting last week in the resort of Mar-a-Lago in the state of Florida with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to the sources, during the meeting, Trump stressed the need to continue talks to reach an agreement as soon as possible, while Netanyahu expressed a positive stance on the condition that Israel’s red lines are maintained.
Axios also indicated that Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al Shaibani will attend the negotiations in the face of the new Israeli negotiating team, and that Netanyahu has assigned, ahead of the upcoming Paris talks, a new negotiating team headed by Israeli Ambassador in the US, Yechiel Leiter.
The report indicated that these negotiations will represent the first meeting to be held in about two months, and will be the fifth round of the ongoing negotiation process between the two parties.
On an almost daily basis, Israeli forces infiltrate into Syrian territory, particularly in the Quneitra countryside, arresting civilians and setting up checkpoints to search and interrogate passers-by, as well as destroying crops.
Although the Syrian government doesn’t pose a threat to Israel, the Israeli military has been carrying out airstrikes that have killed civilians and destroyed Syrian army positions, military vehicles, weapons and ammunition.
