Syria President Al-Sharaa open to normalising ties with Israel ‘under the right conditions’

Syria’s president has reportedly expressed his openness to normalising ties with Israel and joining the Abraham Accords “under the right conditions”, amid the ongoing Israeli occupation of southern Syria and its continuous strikes across the country.

On Friday last week, United States Congressmen Cory Mills of Florida and Marlin Stutzman of Indiana landed in Syria’s capital Damascus to meet Syrian officials, in what was the first official visit by American lawmakers to the country since the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December.

According to Bloomberg, Congressman Mills – who serves on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees – held a meeting the new Syrian interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa that same day, in which the former rebel leader told him that the new Syrian administration is interested “under the right conditions” in joining the Abraham Accords.

The Syrian president was also cited by the US congressman as being open to clarifying plans to address the presence of foreign fighters within Syria – who largely still operate there even after the end of the conflict – as well as to offer guarantees to Israel, which continues to distrust the new Syrian leadership and diplomatically opposes it at the highest levels in appeals to the Trump administration.

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Mills told Bloomberg that he will bring US President Donald Trump a letter from his Syrian counterpart Al-Sharaa, the details of which are unknown, and that he will brief the US president and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz on the trip. “I am cautiously optimistic and look to maintain open dialogue,” the congressman said.

Brokered by Trump’s first administration back in 2019, the Abraham Accords are a set of agreements to normalise relations with Israel, signed by Arab states including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

The “right conditions” reportedly referred to by Al-Sharaa were not elaborated on, but if true, they would likely include a withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the southern areas of Syria and the ceasing of Israeli strikes across the country.

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