NEW YORK — Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said ahead of a historic speech before the U.N. General Assembly that Israel is stalling on moving forward with a peace agreement between the two countries.
Al-Sharaa’s remarks late Tuesday signaled a departure from statements he made only 24 hours earlier when he claimed Syria had reached “advanced stages” of talks with Israel for some type of security agreement.
“There are multiple risks, which is – Israel is stalling all these negotiations and insisting on violating our airspace and incursion in our territories,” al-Sharaa said on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, speaking through a translator in a closed-door discussion hosted by the Middle East Institute (MEI) in New York.
“We said that Syria is not going to pose any threat to any country, including Israel,” he added. “We are scared from Israel. We are worried from Israel. It’s not the other way around.”
Al-Sharaa is set to address world leaders on Wednesday, becoming the first Syrian head of state to address the global body in 58 years. The last time a Syrian leader addressed the U.N. General Assembly was in 1967. The Assad regime, which ruled Syria between 1970 and 2024, was the subject of international and diplomatic isolation over its decades of repressive rule.
Al-Sharaa, a U.S.-designated terrorist, overthrew Bashar al-Assad in December. President Trump put his support behind al-Sharaa after meeting the leader in May in Saudi Arabia and dispatched senior officials to mediate negotiations between Israel and Syria.
Following Assad’s ousting, Israel took over a U.N.-controlled buffer zone between the two countries that had been in place since 1974, an armistice that halted the 1973 war.
An agreement between Israel and Syria was “99% complete,” a senior U.S. official told the Times of Israel on Sunday, and there was expectation for an announcement at the U.N. General Assembly.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged from a security cabinet meeting on Sunday saying that “there was still a ways to go” in talks with Syria, Reuters reported.
Al-Sharaa, speaking on the MEI panel, said the 1974 armistice could serve as a framework for an agreement with Israel, signaling that a pullback of Israeli troops would be part of any security deal between Damascus and Israel. The agreement would also have to address Israeli airstrikes against Syria that have taken place since Assad’s ousting.
Al-Sharaa has said that Israel has carried out more than 1,000 airstrikes, raids and incursions into Syria from its position on the Golan Heights.
Al-Sharaa said an agreement is in Israel’s interest to promote security and stability in Syria that would counter further regional destabilization and tensions, allow for economic growth to take place in Syria and allow for the return of refugees from neighboring countries and Europe.
“If we want stability, we need some type of security arrangement with Israel. Any success in such arrangement will pave the way to perhaps a higher level agreement, where peace would prevail in the region,” he said.
“However, there is no peace in light of this heavy handed policy from Israel, this kind of heavy handed policy, aggressive posturing, has been tested by other countries – whose cultures were proud of…their powers, and these policies failed.”
