By: Fern Sidman

After more than a decade of estrangement defined by civil war, Iranian entrenchment and regional upheaval, Israel and Syria have quietly taken a step that only a few years ago would have been dismissed as fantasy: they have resumed direct diplomatic dialogue. According to a report that appeared on Tuesday at Israel National News, the renewed talks took place this week in Paris under American auspices, with both sides signaling a cautious but unmistakable willingness to explore a new security architecture for the volatile northern frontier.

The Prime Minister’s Office confirmed Tuesday evening that the dialogue had been revived “after a period of several months,” emphasizing that the initiative enjoys “American backing and support” and is aligned with President Donald Trump’s broader vision for advancing stability in the Middle East. For Israel, the stakes are existential; for Syria, emerging from the wreckage of civil war, the talks offer a potential path out of isolation and into a more predictable regional order.

As Israel National News has documented over the past decade, relations between Jerusalem and Damascus have been frozen since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011. During those years, Israel’s northern border transformed into a strategic chessboard where Iranian forces, Hezbollah operatives and assorted militias sought to entrench themselves under the cover of chaos. Israel responded with hundreds of precision strikes designed to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah and to block Iran from establishing a permanent military foothold in Syria.

Against this backdrop, the notion of Israeli and Syrian officials sitting across from one another in a European capital is remarkable. The PMO’s statement underscored that the dialogue is not born of sentimentality but of necessity. Israel reiterated, the office said, its “commitment to promoting regional stability and security,” while stressing the imperative of protecting Israeli citizens and neutralizing threats along the border.

The Israel National News report noted that the resumption of talks comes amid a broader realignment in the Middle East. The weakening of Iran’s regional proxies, the changing dynamics in Lebanon, and the Trump administration’s renewed diplomatic activism have collectively created a narrow window in which long-dormant channels can be reactivated.

Central to this development is the role of Washington. The PMO explicitly framed the Paris talks as part of “President Trump’s vision for promoting peace in the Middle East,” a formulation that echoes earlier diplomatic initiatives pursued during his previous term. In those years, Trump brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states, fundamentally altering the regional landscape.

This time, the focus is not on formal normalization but on the more modest — yet no less critical — objective of crafting a security framework that could stabilize Israel’s northern frontier and reduce the risk of escalation. Israel National News reported that American diplomats were not merely observers but active facilitators, pressing both sides to move beyond rhetorical posturing and toward practical arrangements.

The Trump administration’s leverage over Damascus is not insignificant. Syria’s post-war economy is in ruins, international sanctions have choked off investment, and the regime remains diplomatically isolated in much of the West. For Damascus, even a limited opening with Israel under American sponsorship could unlock avenues for economic relief, reconstruction aid or at least a loosening of its pariah status.

Adding texture to the official statements, Israeli journalist Barak Ravid reported that an Israeli official emerged from the Paris talks with a measure of optimism. According to Ravid, the Syrian delegation agreed to meet more frequently in the coming months, signaling a desire to accelerate the pace of negotiations rather than allow the process to languish in procedural inertia.

The same source told Ravid that both sides committed to undertaking “confidence-building measures,” a phrase that in diplomatic parlance can encompass everything from military de-confliction mechanisms to humanitarian cooperation and symbolic gestures designed to build trust.

The Israel National News report emphasized that this willingness to engage more intensively marks a departure from the tentative feelers of previous years, when indirect contacts were sporadic and fragile. This time, the agenda appears more structured, and the political backing — from Jerusalem, Damascus and Washington alike — more explicit.

At the heart of the renewed dialogue lies a shared anxiety about instability along the Israel-Syria border. Although the Assad regime has reasserted control over much of the country, southern Syria remains a mosaic of local militias, residual jihadist elements and Iranian-backed forces. For Israel, this is an intolerable configuration.

In its statement, the PMO highlighted the need “to ensure the security of its citizens and prevent threats to its borders,” a formulation that Israel National News interpreted as a clear demand that any future arrangement include robust mechanisms to keep hostile actors — particularly Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — at bay.

From Syria’s perspective, the calculus is more complex. The regime in Damascus must balance its long-standing alliance with Tehran against the strategic and economic benefits of de-escalating with Israel. The Paris talks, therefore, are not merely bilateral; they are an arena in which Syria’s broader regional orientation is being renegotiated.

Perhaps the most striking element of the PMO’s statement was its reference to “the need to promote economic cooperation for the benefit of both countries.” For two states technically still at war, the invocation of economic partnership borders on revolutionary.

Israel National News analysts noted that such cooperation, if it ever materializes, would likely begin at the margins: cross-border trade in agricultural goods, joint infrastructure projects in the Golan region, or coordinated water management initiatives. Even modest steps in this direction could generate constituencies on both sides with a vested interest in stability.

Yet the obstacles are formidable. Syria’s economy is devastated, its institutions hollowed out by years of conflict, and its currency in free fall. For Israeli investors or companies to contemplate engagement, there would need to be ironclad guarantees regarding security, transparency and international legal cover.

One of the most sensitive issues addressed in the Paris talks, according to the PMO, was the security of Syria’s Druze minority. The Druze community straddles the Israel-Syria border, with significant populations in the Golan Heights and southern Syria. Historically loyal to the Syrian state yet deeply connected to their Israeli counterparts, the Druze have often found themselves caught between rival powers.

Israel National News reported that Jerusalem has made the protection of Syrian Druze a priority, particularly in the aftermath of recent clashes involving militias operating near Druze villages. For Israel, ensuring the safety of this community is not merely a humanitarian concern but a strategic one: unrest among the Druze could easily spill across the border, igniting wider conflict.

The PMO’s commitment to “maintain the security of the Druze minority in Syria” thus serves as both a moral statement and a diplomatic lever, signaling to Damascus that Israel’s engagement is contingent upon tangible improvements on the ground.

Despite the cautiously upbeat tone, seasoned observers caution against premature optimism. Israel National News reminded readers that previous attempts at Israeli-Syrian rapprochement — including secret talks in the 1990s and early 2000s — ultimately foundered on irreconcilable differences over territory, security arrangements and mutual distrust.

This time, however, the regional context is different. The balance of power has shifted, Iran’s reach is under pressure, and the United States has reinserted itself into Middle Eastern diplomacy with renewed vigor. These factors do not guarantee success, but they do create conditions in which incremental progress is conceivable.

Beyond the specifics of the agenda, the very act of dialogue carries symbolic weight. For a generation of Israelis and Syrians raised on narratives of implacable hostility, the image of diplomats discussing “common goals” is jarring — and, perhaps, quietly hopeful.

As Israel National News aptly put it in its coverage of the PMO’s statement, the Paris talks are less about resolving decades of conflict overnight than about testing whether the logic of perpetual confrontation can finally be replaced with a framework of managed coexistence.

Whether this embryonic process will mature into a formal security agreement remains uncertain. But for now, after years in which the only communication between Jerusalem and Damascus came via airstrikes and proxy skirmishes, the reopening of a diplomatic channel — however narrow — represents a tectonic shift.

In the words of one Israeli official quoted by Barak Ravid and echoed by Israel National News, both sides have expressed a desire “to reach a security agreement under Trump’s vision for the Middle East.” It is a sentence laden with ambition — and with the weight of history pressing heavily upon it.