Syria offers to revive historic disengagement deal with Israel, seeks US mediation

Syria has announced its readiness to cooperate with the United States in efforts to restore the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, marking a potential diplomatic shift amid heightened tensions along the Israeli-Syrian border.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani made the remarks following a phone conversation with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Caliber.Az reports, citing Israeli media.

“I expressed Syria’s aspiration to cooperate with the United States to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement,” Shaibani said in an official statement released shortly after the call.

The 1974 disengagement agreement, brokered after the Yom Kippur War, established a ceasefire line and a demilitarized buffer zone between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights. The arrangement has been overseen by the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) for decades.

However, the accord has come under strain following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024. In the wake of Assad’s fall, Israeli forces took control of the buffer zone along the Syrian border — a move the United Nations considers a breach of the longstanding disengagement accord.

Israel has defended its actions, stating that the agreement became unworkable after the Syrian government’s effective collapse left no counterpart to uphold the deal. Israeli officials maintain the move was a strategic necessity to prevent extremist groups from exploiting the security vacuum along its northern frontier. “The takeover was a defensive move to protect the country from potential hostile forces that could have exploited the power vacuum,” a senior Israeli defence official said.

While Syria and Israel have technically remained in a state of war since 1948, the 1974 accord had provided a degree of stability along the Golan Heights for nearly five decades. 

By Vafa Guliyeva