Anger in Syria as talks with Israel trump national dialogue on Suweida crisis

Syrian state media has revealed details regarding Tuesday's meeting in Paris between Syria's foreign minister Asaad al-Shibani and an Israeli delegation, in which several issues were discussed, including ways to bring about stability in the region and southern Syria, in particular in Suweida province.

According to Syrian state news agency SANA, Tuesday's meeting focused on "de-escalation, non-interference in Syria's internal affairs, the reaching of an understanding which would support stability in the region, monitoring the ceasefire in Suweida province, and reactivating the 1974 agreement"

The last was a reference to the 1974 UN-brokered disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel, which Israel violated after the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024.

SANA reported that the discussions "took place with US mediation as part of diplomatic efforts to strengthen security and stability in Syria and preserve its unity and integrity".

Notably, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel, Sheikh Muwaffaq Tarif, who has reportedly been pushing for a "humanitarian corridor" to be opened between the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Suweida, attended alongside the Israeli delegation, meeting with US envoy Tom Barrack.

Anger at Israel talks

Some Syrians however have expressed anger at Tuesday's meeting, questioning why the Suweida crisis isn't being addressed via Syrian-Syrian dialogue instead of the government resorting to talks with Israeli officials to address it.

Commenting on Tuesday's meeting in Paris, Yahya Al-Aridi, an academic from Suweida, told The New Arab's sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: "The road from Damascus to Suweida is shorter and less costly than going to Paris, Baku or Tel Aviv [...] and it is certainly less costly than committing war crimes, and less oppressive for Syrians than taking instructions from the Israelis, under American sponsorship, openly".

"Suweida and its people are a part of Syria", he said. He claimed that Suweida was "besieged" and said that this was "a matter which has [apparently] necessitated these Syrians to be rescued via a humanitarian corridor, through Israeli action, American sponsorship, and French oversight".

The Syrian government has denied that it has imposed a siege on Suweida, but local activists have said the province is in a "catastrophic" state, with shortages of food, water, fuel, and electricity.

He asked: "After all this, how can we demand the occupied Syrian Golan heights back? Or a return to the 1974 agreement? The most important question is: Why is all this happening?"

The Syrian government says that parties linked to Israel are responsible for bringing the situation in southern Syria to this point, by rejecting all government-proposed solutions proposed for a peaceful resolution to the Suweida crisis.

Israeli encroachment viewed with alarm

Recent proposals on a "humanitarian corridor" between the Israel-occupied Golan Heights and Suweida, which have been pushed by figures like Tarif, have been viewed with alarm in Syria.

The corridor would need to pass through Daraa Governorate, which borders Suweida to the west, posing significant security risks, given widespread local opposition to any such Israeli project, which many Syrians fear Israel would exploit to penetrate deeper into Syrian territory.

However, on Wednesday evening, a Syrian government source announced that there would be no cross-border humanitarian corridor and that humanitarian aid would be carried out exclusively in coordination with state institutions in Damascus.

Views on Israeli intervention among the Druze

Syria's Druze population has been mixed in its response to Israeli claims that it wishes to "protect" their community in Syria.

While many have vocally rejected Israeli intervention and statements on the issue, deep tensions between the Druze community, especially in Suweida, and the new government in Damascus have seen some welcoming the idea of Israeli "protection".

In the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, which has a large Druze population, the local civil committee released a statement expressing concern over a recent protest in Suweida city, "in which the Israeli flag was raised, the symbolism of which cannot be ignored nor its seriousness downplayed".

However, the statement added that the display of the Israeli flag must not "be removed from its deep social and political context" and that it "shouldn’t be read as a betrayal or a shift in identity and belonging, but rather as a symbolic scream […] it is a protest against a state that is out-of-sync with its citizens, in which trust between itself and a fundamental component of Syrian society has collapsed".

The statement warned that the act of raising the flag could be viewed as "an exceptional act of protest in the face of a blocked horizon and the absence of a supportive state. We consider this a moment of acute national alarm, which must not be dealt with through security and heavy-handed tactics, but rather through understanding and by addressing [the issue] politically, economically and socially”.

Political analyst Abdul Karim al-Omar said that "an internal Syrian issue being transformed into a bargaining chip with a regional party - specifically Israel" and added that this was "regretful".

In his view, it "could have been dealt with as a national issue and resolved through dialogue, regardless of the relationship between certain groups in Suweida and Israel."

"It is not too late to open a new dialogue between the state and all the parties in Suweida in order to reach national solutions so that no internal issue is internationalized," he added.

He said this approach was needed to prevent Israel exploiting the issue to impose its own "dictates and conditions" on the Syrian government.

This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition.