rQuiet talks in Paris, backed by Washington, signal a major shift after decades of hostility — and could become a rare, legitimate foreign-policy success for the Trump team
Something significant is happening between Israel and Syria, and it deserves more attention than it is getting. Under U.S. sponsorship, Israeli and Syrian officials have been meeting in Paris and have agreed to create what they call a “joint fusion mechanism” — a permanent channel for coordination on intelligence, de-escalation, diplomacy, and economic matters. It appears to be the beginning of institutionalized contact between two countries that have formally been at war since 1948.
If this process continues, it will count as a genuine foreign-policy success for the Trump administration – coming precisely as it engages in legally questionable actions in Venezuela and has indulges in dangerous saber-rattling about Greenland, thus threatening fellow NATO member Denmark. The administration could use a legitimate foreign policy win.
To understand how profound that win would be, it is worth recalling the history.
For decades, Israel and Syria fought openly or by proxy. They clashed in 1948, 1967, and 1973. Before 1967, Syrian artillery positions in the Golan Heights regularly shelled Israeli communities in the Hula Valley and around the Sea of Galilee. After Israel captured the Golan in 1967, the direct shelling stopped, but the conflict did not.
Syria remained formally committed to a state of war; Israel entrenched itself on the plateau, which has since been annexed; both sides treated the frontier as a potential flashpoint to be managed carefully. Since Egypt and Israel made peace in 1979, Syria for long stood out as the Jewish state’s most dangerous enemy and neighbor.
The 1974 disengagement agreement created a UN-monitored buffer zone and mostly kept the peace along the line, but it did not resolve anything fundamental. In Lebanon, Israel and Syria backed opposing forces for years (and their air forces clashed briefly during the 1982 Lebanon War). Later, Iran’s growing role in Syria and Hezbollah’s military buildup added layers of risk. The Syrian civil war then destroyed basic state capacity and created precisely the kind of militia-rich environment Israel fears along its borders.
Now, with Bashar al-Assad gone and Ahmed al-Sharaa in power, Syria is trying to stabilize a broken country. Sharaa’s past associations, very disturbingly, include leadership of jihadist currents that were part of the wartime landscape in Syria. But today he governs a state facing economic collapse, infrastructure ruin, and a population that needs jobs and basic services. His incentives are simple and powerful: survival of his regime, international validation, foreign investment, and relief from isolation and sanctions. Those goals point toward the United States and its partners, not toward jihadism of war with Israel.
The Trump administration has made it clear that cooperation with Israel is one of the key signals Washington wants to see. In practice, that means that progress with Israel becomes a gateway to investment from Western and Gulf sources, and to a degree of political acceptance that Syria has lacked for years. Sharaa’s willingness to engage is therefore not a mystery. Whether his private beliefs have changed may, in an optimistic scenario, matter less.
Israel’s motivations are also straightforward. After the Gaza war, Israel is facing a severe reputational problem. It is widely viewed abroad as reckless and excessively militarized, regardless of how fairly or unfairly Israelis think that label is applied. The government is under pressure not only for the conduct of the war but for the perception that it has no political strategy and relies almost exclusively on force. A diplomatic track with Syria allows Israel to present a very different picture: a country that is capable of negotiations, de-escalation, and regional cooperation.
There are hard security incentives, too. Israel wants to keep Iranian and Hezbollah presence out in Syria. It wants a predictable northern border. It wants assurances regarding the Druze population in southern Syria – brethren to the Israeli Druze who are extremely loyal to the state – and no armed groups near the Golan. A coordinated mechanism supervised by the United States offers a way to address these issues without relying only on periodic airstrikes or unilateral ground operations. In that sense, the process is not a gift to Israel so much as a rational tool in pursuit of its own priorities.
Indeed, on the Syria front, any progress that does not require territorial concessions on the Golan Heights is a huge and unexpected boon. Indeed, there are now questions being asked about whether a peace deal might be possible without Israel giving up the strategic plateau – which would be extremely unpopular in an Israel where most people cannot remember a time when they did not control it. This issue scuttled a serious peace effort in the 1990s.
The United States benefits as well. The Trump team is eager to show that it can deliver visible diplomatic achievements in the Middle East. The Abraham Accords provided one example. In Trump’s first term; a meaningful shift in Israel–Syria relations would be a very welcome addition. The administration’s style is personalized and deal-focused, not multilateral and process-driven, but that style may work well: Trump has been heaping praise on Sharaa – a bear-hug that appears to be yielding dividends.
The main questions now are practical. Can the “joint fusion mechanism” function under pressure? What happens when there is an incident — a drone downed, a militia clash, a cross-border strike? Does the new system lower the temperature or does it collapse at the first crisis? Will Iran accept a Syria that coordinates with Israel under U.S. supervision, or will it work to undermine Sharaa? How will Hezbollah react if Damascus appears to move away from the axis of “resistance” and toward a security understanding with Israel?
Critically, how would an Israel-Syria deal impact the moribund efforts by Lebanon to dismantle the military capacity of Hezbollah? Sharaa has already helped significantly by ending the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah from Iran through his territory. Might he also actively help with the disarming of the group?
No one should expect a full peace treaty soon. The Golan Heights question probably does remain a deal-breaker. Public opinion in Syria has been shaped by decades of official hostility to Israel, and Israeli politics is fragmented and volatile. But diplomatic breakthroughs can confound expectations. They usually begin with mechanisms like this one: limited cooperation, routine contact, and crisis management.
If this effort helps move the border from a zone of permanent tension to one of managed stability, that alone would be a major shift. It would also send a signal beyond the region: U.S. engagement still matters, and American pressure and incentives can still change behavior. Whatever happens next, 2026 should certainly be interesting.
