Can Trump help repair Israeli ties with Lebanon, Syria? – DW – 07/03/2025
While the dust is still settling after the 12-day-war between Iran, Israel and the US, diplomacy across the Middle East is on the rise.
According to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "the victory [over Iran] opens the path to dramatically enlarge the peace accords."
Already, new billboards across Israel feature Arab leaders including the presidents of Lebanon and Syria, with US President Donald Trump in the center, alongside the words "The 'Abraham Alliance: It's Time for a New Middle East."
The term "Abraham Accords" was coined in 2020 for US-brokered diplomatic normalization deals between Israel and several Arab countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
However, forging ties with Syria or Lebanon is somewhat more delicate.
"The signatories to the Abraham Accords were never really in conflict, whereas Israel and Lebanon, and Israel and Syria are in a decades-long conflict," Neil Quilliam, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the London-based think tank Chatham House, told DW.
"And that conflict remains hot," he added.
Officially, Syria and Israel have been at war since 1967. That year, Israel occupied the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau at the border with Syria, which it later annexed. The United Nations never recognized the move, but the US recognized the area as Israeli territory in 2019, during Donald Trump's first presidency.
After Syria's current President Ahmed al-Sharaa led an alliance of militias who overthrew the country's long-term dictator Bashar Assad in December 2024, Israeli troops expanded their presence on the Syrian side of a 1974 armistice line.
Notwithstanding Israeli military in Syria as well as repeated attacks on Syrian ground, US President Trump has been increasingly pushing for a potential security agreement between Israel and Syria.
On Wednesday, Syrian state TV reported that it was impossible to talk about "negotiations over a new agreement unless the occupation fully adheres the 1974 disengagement agreement and withdraws from the areas it has penetrated."
Also, Tom Barrack, the US special envoy to Syria, told the Turkish news agency Anadolu that Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa "has indicated that he doesn't hate Israel and that he wants peace on that border."
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Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar already said that his country was interested in adding Syria to the Abraham Accords. However, he also emphasized that "the control of the Golan Heights will remain part of the State of Israel under any future peace agreement."
For Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East Security at the London-based think tank Royal United Services Institute, all of this could point to a smaller, albeit also significant move.
"Even a preliminary non-aggression agreement, short of a comprehensive settlement between Syria and Israel, would be a game changer in the region," she told DW.
"However remote this may seem now, diplomatic backchannelling in recent months has focused on steps that could jumpstart Syria's economic recovery via sanctions relief, ensuring it does not fall victim to a resurgence of Iran-linked violence, and deconfliction talks between Turkey and Israel," she added.
"All this points towards US-supported stabilization efforts in Syria and for the sake of the war-weary Syrian people, these efforts matter," Ozcelik said.
Meanwhile, Neil Quilliam doesn't see any chances for a nearing peace deal with Israel's neighbor in the north. "Lebanon's President Aoun and the political class around him cannot deliver peace as there will be too much domestic opposition inside the country," he told DW.
Following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia whose military wing is considered a terrorist group by several key players, including the US and the European Union, started attacking Israel from Lebanon's south.
After some 12 months of skirmishes, the situation escalated into eight weeks of war. Israel diminished Hezbollah's clout while more than 3,000 people were killed and large parts of Lebanon's south and Beirut's suburbs were heavily damaged in Israeli fire.
While a ceasefire in January 2025 halted most of the strikes, some of the conditions attached to the deal, such as the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the deployment of Lebanese armed forces in the south, are yet to happen.
"Israel still occupies five hilltop outposts in the country and continues to strike targets in Beirut at will," Quilliam said, adding that "also Hezbollah is not about to disarm, therefore, peace is off the table."
"The recent lifting of sanctions on Syria by the US, in addition to the US talking about a desire for more peace deals with Syria and Lebanon, mirrors an effort that is supported by the Trump administration in line with its allies, not only Israel, but also Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar chief of all," Kelly Petillo, Middle East researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told DW.
"Donald Trump has the idea of getting a Nobel Peace Prize by bringing peace to the Middle East," she said, adding that "short of a nuclear deal with Iran or a Gaza ceasefire, the US is now trying to achieve this through expanding the Abraham Accords."
However, she sees issues with Trump's course.
"Nobody is willing to contain Israel's maximalist instincts, which result not only in huge human suffering in neighboring countries, but also in potential loss of territory in Syria and Lebanon," Petillo said.
There is also another key stumbling block to a peace deal with Lebanon and Syria, Chatham House's Quilliam and ECFR's Petillo both point out.
"To be honest, Trump doesn't have any diplomatic skill, nor frankly, fundamentally, personally cares about bringing these visions all together to reach a compromise," Petillo said.
"Trump is not a peacemaker," Quilliam agrees. "Trump's Mideast diplomacy papers over cracks."
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