{"id":12605,"date":"2025-07-04T18:04:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T18:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=12605"},"modified":"2025-07-04T18:04:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T18:04:04","slug":"syria-to-cooperate-with-us-on-1974-disengagement-deal-with-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=12605","title":{"rendered":"Syria to cooperate with US on 1974 disengagement deal\u00a0with\u00a0Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Syria said on Friday it was willing to cooperate with the United States to reimplement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, which created a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating the two countries&#8217; forces.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement after a phone call with his US counterpart Marco Rubio, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani expressed Damascus&#8217;s &#8220;aspiration to cooperate with the United States to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Washington has been driving diplomatic efforts towards a normalisation deal between Syria and Israel, with envoy Thomas Barrack saying last week that peace between the two was now needed.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to The New York Times, Barrack confirmed this week that Syria and Israel were engaging in &#8220;meaningful&#8221; US-brokered talks to end their conflict.<\/p>\n<p>Following the toppling of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria and deployed its troops into the Golan Heights buffer zone, which the UN considered a violation of the agreement.<\/p>\n<p>Israel has also launched hundreds of air strikes on military targets in Syria and carried out incursions deeper into the country&#8217;s south.<\/p>\n<p>Syria&#8217;s new authorities refrained from responding to the attacks and admitted to holding indirect talks with Israel to reduce tensions.<\/p>\n<p>The two countries have no official diplomatic relations, with Syria not recognising Israel and the two nations technically at war since 1948.<\/p>\n<p>Israel conquered around two-thirds of the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, before annexing it in 1981 in a move not recognised by any country other than the United States.<\/p>\n<p>A year after the 1973 war, the two reached an agreement on a disengagement line.<\/p>\n<p>As part of the deal, an 80-kilometre-long (50-mile) United Nations-patrolled buffer zone was created to the east of Israeli-occupied territory, separating it from the Syrian-controlled side.<\/p>\n<p>Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Monday that his country had an &#8220;interest&#8221; in normalising ties with Syria and neighbouring Lebanon.<\/p>\n<p>He added, however, that the Golan Heights &#8220;will remain part of the State of Israel&#8221; under any future peace agreement.<\/p>\n<p>Syrian state media reported on Wednesday that &#8220;statements concerning signing a peace agreement with the Israeli occupation at this time are considered premature&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>During the call with Rubio, Shaibani received a formal invitation &#8220;to visit Washington as soon as possible&#8221;, according to the foreign ministry&#8217;s statement.<\/p>\n<p>The two men also discussed Syrian Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa&#8217;s participation in the upcoming United Nations General Assembly, which the UN did not confirm.<\/p>\n<p>Shaibani previously visited the UN headquarters in New York in April, where he raised Syria&#8217;s new flag.<\/p>\n<p>He and Rubio talked about &#8220;the Iranian threat in Syria&#8221;, with Damascus expressing &#8220;its growing concern over Iran&#8217;s attempts to interfere in Syrian affairs, especially following the strikes that recently targeted Tehran&#8221;, referring to last month&#8217;s Iran-Israel war.<\/p>\n<p>Tehran used to enjoy significant political and military influence in Syria and provided key support for Assad during the Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Syria said on Friday it was willing to cooperate with the United States to reimplement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, which created a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating the two countries&#8217; forces. In a statement after a phone call with his US counterpart Marco Rubio, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani expressed Damascus&#8217;s &#8220;aspiration to cooperate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}