After over a week of Israeli bombings, incursions, and civilian bloodshed in Syria, Damascus turned to the UN Security Council to convene an emergency briefing session on the Israeli aggression this week in an appeal backed by Algeria and Somalia as non-Permanent Members.
Syria’s ambassador to the UN protested against Israel’s repeated violations of Syrian sovereignty and called on the international community to compel it to withdraw from newly occupied territories in the Daraa and Quneitra governorates.
He also demanded a halt to Israel’s plundering of Syrian water resources. Israel has seized control of numerous strategic water sources in Syria, including the Mantara Dam, one of the largest water reserves in the south of the country.
Turkey’s representative at the Security Council warned that Israel’s incursions and territorial expansion into Syria threaten not only civil peace in Syria but also regional peace and security. Algeria’s representative added that Israel must withdraw its forces to behind the 1974 armistice line, stressing that the only permissible military presence on the Syrian side of the border is the UN force tasked with monitoring the 1974 Disengagement Agreement.
The Russian ambassador to the UN denounced attempts to impose external solutions on Syria during the transitional period, noting that the Israeli assaults were fuelling separatist tendencies and threatening Syrian unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.
The US ambassador to the UN, siding with Israel, reiterated Israeli fears of Syria turning into a base for terrorists. She said that the US would be judging the new Syrian government by its actions and not its words and welcomed the start of Turkish-Israeli talks on how to avoid a clash between the two countries in Syria.
During his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in Washington on 8 April, US President Donald Trump said that the US would help the Israelis and the Turks resolve any disputes between them in Syria, provided that Israel’s demands were reasonable.
Netanyahu said he opposed the establishment of Turkish military bases in Syria, claiming that these would pose a threat to Israeli security. Trump, however, seemed to support Turkey’s plans to secure the civil peace in Syria, which entails establishing Turkish military bases in central Syria to train the new Syrian Army, stabilise the new system of government, and counter threats to the new order and potential separatist ambitions.
At least on the surface, the Israeli plan to partition Syria and perpetuate anarchy and strife there does not have Washington’s approval, and this could signal an end to Israel’s disruptive role in southern Syria.
The green light Turkey received from the US for its post-Al-Assad involvement in Syria is largely attributable to the excellent relationship between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which has put restraints on Israeli military expansionism in Syria and forced Tel Aviv to enter into talks with Ankara on the Syrian issue.
The first meeting was held on 10 April, after Netanyahu had returned home from an unusually disappointing visit to Washington. Turkish and Israeli military delegations met in Azerbaijan for technical talks aimed at creating a deconfliction mechanism, along the lines of the one that earlier existed between Russia and Israel to avert a potential clash between the two sides in Syrian airspace.
Israel’s entry into these talks constitutes a tacit acceptance of Turkish military expansion from Syria’s northwestern governorates into the central region, which includes the vicinity of the Syrian capital and borders on southern Syria, where Israel has been wreaking havoc.
The US support for Turkey’s project in Syria is a key factor behind the renewed stabilisation of the country, and it was also instrumental in accelerating the understanding between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Damascus government over integrating the SDF into new and unified Syrian state structures, including the military and police.
Since the official agreement was signed between the two sides on 11 March, a joint administrative body composed of representatives of the Damascus government and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has been formed to manage and protect the Tishrin Dam in Manbij in the Aleppo governorate, a strategic water and energy resource that had been controlled by the SDF.
The Kurdish asayish (security) forces have also handed over responsibilities in Kurdish-majority neighbourhoods in Aleppo, such as Ashrafieh and Sheikh Maqsoud, to government security forces. Turkish-backed Syrian militias have also reduced their presence in the Kurdish-majority area of Afrin in favour of government forces.
While the details of the understandings between Damascus and the AANES remain unclear, a spirit of rapprochement is gaining momentum. An indication is to be found in the buffer zone that Syrian government forces have established between SDF forces and Turkish-backed militias in the north of the country.
Damascus appears to be keen to reframe the Kurdish presence in the north of Syria in a manner that Turkey cannot cite as a threat. The Kurdish political forces are also preparing for a conference where a list of demands will be drawn up to safeguard Kurdish rights. This will be presented to the Damascus government as a frame-of-reference for negotiations over the full integration of Kurdish entities into the unified Syrian state.
In the south of the country, the Eighth Brigade, which is close to Moscow, has announced that it will disband, hand over its weapons and equipment to the Syrian Defence Ministry, and place its members under the command of the Syrian Army.
The Brigade, led by Ahmed Al-Awda and active in the Daraa region, is the last of the southern militias to do so. Its decision is likely informed by the public outrage caused by the recent murder of a young local resident committed by some of its members who were subsequently surrendered to the government authorities.
The Eighth Brigade was one of the paramilitary formations created by Russia in southern Syria following the de-escalation agreements brokered between the former Al-Assad regime and the opposition militias in 2018. It was also one of the Southern Operations Room militias that marched on the capital in tandem with the forces led by Hayaat Tahrir Al-Sham, which advanced from the north, culminating in the overthrow of the Al-Assad regime in December last year.
Afterwards, it held out against pressures to dissolve itself and integrate its members into the military and security forces under the command of the Syrian Ministry of Defence.
The government has now turned its attention to the area of Suweida, in the hope of persuading the local militias there to follow the lead of the SDF and Eighth Brigade. It will then be able to assert its sovereignty over large parts of the country that have long remained outside of the control of the central government in Damascus. For the moment, however, an agreement remains out of reach due to intermittent tensions.
Amid the Israeli escalation and the local de-escalation in the south, Syrian Interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa took part in the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey. The most high-profile event he has attended since the emergency Arab Summit in Cairo earlier this year, this marked another major step towards the international recognition of the new Syrian regime.
On the sidelines of the proceedings, Al-Sharaa met with the presidents of Turkey, Kosovo, and Azerbaijan, as well as the Qatari foreign minister and Libyan prime minister. Afterwards, he flew to the UAE to meet with President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who expressed his intention of supporting Damascus in contending with the challenges of reconstruction and transition.
The UAE had been among the Arab capitals that has remained sceptical about the nature of the change in Damascus under the country’s new leadership. While in the UAE, the Syrian president also met with Syrian businesspeople, urging them to help promote Emirati participation in Syrian reconstruction and economic recovery efforts.
However, the ongoing US sanctions, and especially the continued exclusion of the Syrian Central Bank from the SWIFT international payment system, remain a formidable obstacle to such efforts. A high-level Syrian delegation led by the foreign and finance ministers and the Central Bank governor will travel to Washington to attend the forthcoming meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to explore the prospects for securing emergency aid packages to spur Syria’s economic recovery.
It will be the first time Syria has participated in an international financial event at this level in over 20 years.
At the same time, a group of prominent Syrian-American figures are planning to meet with US Congressional leaders to push for the lifting of the US sanctions. Among the most devastating are the sanctions packaged as the Caesar Act, passed by Congress in January 2019 with broad bipartisan support. Repealing this would require a similar majority.
What has made these sanctions especially harmful has been their secondary nature, meaning that they also target third parties engaging directly with Syrian government financial and other institutions.
For this reason, they severely hampered earthquake relief efforts in 2023, despite their partial lifting at that time. As long as they remain in place, they will continue to hinder investment and the influx of goods and services needed for reconstruction and economic recovery in Syria.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 17 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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