Talks between neighboring Syria and Israel are at a standstill, with Tel Aviv only willing to withdraw its troops in exchange for a comprehensive peace agreement, according to media reports Wednesday.
Citing anonymous Israeli sources, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan reported that negotiations between Israel and Syria for a historic security agreement are currently stalled. The main sticking point is Syria’s demand that Israeli forces withdraw from the areas they occupied after the fall of the Bashar Assad regime last year.
According to the report, Tel Aviv refuses to take this step without a comprehensive peace agreement with Damascus, which is not currently on the agenda.
After the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024, Israel expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights by seizing the demilitarized buffer zone, a move that violated the 1974 Disengagement Agreement with Syria.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces pushed into the village of Bariqa in the southern Syrian province of Quneitra on Wednesday, marking the latest reported breach of Syrian sovereignty, according to its state media.
Syria’s official news agency, SANA, said an Israeli unit composed of a pickup truck and a van crossed into the village. The reported advance followed Israeli shelling of the Quneitra countryside a day earlier.
Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli army fired four artillery shells at the eastern Tel Ahmar forest area in southern Quneitra, SANA reported, adding that no information was immediately available regarding casualties or material damage.
The strike occurred only hours after Israeli forces were said to have moved into rural areas of both Quneitra and Daraa in southern Syria. Neither the Israeli military nor Syrian officials issued any immediate statements on the incidents.
Israeli incursions in Quneitra have intensified in recent weeks, according to residents, who report advances onto farmland, the destruction of large swaths of forested areas, arrests of locals and the establishment of new military checkpoints.
On Monday, a Russian military delegation, accompanied by officers and personnel from the Syrian Defense and Interior Ministries, conducted a field tour in the Tel Ahmar area of the Quneitra countryside, according to local sources.
The reasons for this visit were not announced and the Syrian government provided no details. Media outlets close to Israel, however, quoted a Syrian source close to the government in Damascus, claiming that the surprise visit was part of a Russian proposal to redeploy military police patrols in the south to create a buffer zone between Israeli and Syrian forces.
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