Seoul Gazette - US suggests Syria-Israel non-aggression deal

Syria and Israel have technically been at war since 1948, with Israel taking the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967.

Since the ouster in December of former president Bashar al-Assad, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes and multiple incursions into Syria.

Barrack, who inaugurated the US ambassador's residence in Damascus on Thursday, said the conflict between the two countries was a "solvable problem".

To him, Syria and Israel could "start with just a non-aggression agreement, talk about boundaries and borders" to build a new relationship with its neighbour.

Israel has said its strikes on Syria were aimed at preventing advanced weapons from falling into the hands of the new authorities, whom it considers jihadists.

It has also threatened further intervention should the new authorities fail to protect the Druze religious minority.

Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said earlier this month that his administration was holding "indirect talks" with Israel to calm tensions between the two countries.

- Restoring US ties -

Sharaa, who led the rebel offensive that toppled Assad in December, was once a jihadist leader wanted in the United States.

Since coming to power, he has repeatedly pledged inclusive governance that is open to the world, and restored Syria's ties with global powers, ending decades of isolation under Assad.

While on tour in the Gulf earlier this month, US President Donald Trump announced the lifting of sanctions on Syria, and said he hoped the country would normalise relations with Israel.

"I told him, I hope you're going to join once you're straightened out and he said yes. But they have a lot of work to do," he said of Sharaa.

He also called Sharaa a "young, attractive guy" with a "very strong past. Fighter".

On May 8, Sharaa said in France that Syria was holding "indirect talks through mediators" with Israel to "try to contain the situation so it does not reach the point where it escapes the control of both sides."

The United States has in recent months started rebuilding ties with Syria, ending more than a decade of diplomatic freeze.

Syria signed a $7 billion energy deal on Thursday with a consortium of Qatari, US and Turkish companies as it seeks to rehabilitate its war-ravaged electricity sector.

- US flag raised -

The agreement, signed in the presence of interim Sharaa and Barrack, is expected to generate 5,000 megawatts of electricity and cover half of the country's needs.

Barrack, who is also ambassador to Turkey, inaugurated the US ambassador's residence in the Syrian capital with Syrian Foreign Minister Assaad al-Shaibani, state media outlet SANA reported.

AFP photographers saw the US flag raised at the ambassador's residence, just a few hundred metres (yards) from the US embassy in the Abu Rummaneh neighbourhood, under tight security.

"Tom understands there is great potential in working with Syria to stop Radicalism, improve Relations, and secure Peace in the Middle East," Trump said, according to a post on the State Department's X.

The US embassy in Syria was closed after Assad's repression of a peaceful uprising that began in 2011, which degenerated into civil war.

Barrack met with interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Istanbul on 24 May, after the United States lifted sanctions on Syria.

The meeting followed a meeting in Riyadh between Trump and Sharaa, who led the Islamist coalition that toppled Assad in December.

The last US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, was declared persona non grata in 2011 after defying the Syrian government by visiting a city that was under army siege and the site of a major anti-regime protests.

In late December, a US delegation led by Barbara Leaf, the State Department's Middle East representative, held an initial meeting with the new leadership in Damascus.

C.Noh--SG