Meeting comes after Shaibani told Reuters Israel has ‘historic opportunity’ for diplomacy • IDF struck Syrian airbase last week intended to prevent Turkish military presence, sources told the Post
(L-R): Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani; Mossad Director Roman Gofman(photo credit: CHAIM GOLDBERG/FLASH90, REUTERS/YVES HERMAN)ByAMICHAI STEIN, IDAN KWELLER, JERUSALEM POST STAFFAUGUST 23, 2026 18:43Updated: AUGUST 24, 2026 00:04
A meeting held on Sunday between Israeli and Syrian officials “went well” amid ongoing efforts to lower tensions between the two countries, a source familiar with the meeting told The Jerusalem Post.
Those in attendance included Mossad chief Roman Gofman and Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, as well as the heads of the country’s General and Military intelligence services, according to N12 News.
Shaibani said the meeting dealt with halting Israeli attacks and renewing negotiations for a security agreement between the countries, N12 also reported.
He added that the Syrian side emphasized the need to reduce tensions between Israel and Turkey, N12 reported, saying that Syria fears tensions between the two countries will continue to spill over into Syrian territory.
The Syrian delegation stressed its opposition to an agreement which would prohibit it from building up its military and forging alliances, the report said, adding that the Syrians wanted discussions regarding the Golan Heights to be conducted separately and that the focus of the current talks should remain on the subject of Israel’s withdrawal to pre-2024 lines.
The meeting came after comments from Shaibani to Reuters on Saturday, in which he urged Israel to seize a “historic opportunity” for diplomacy.
View of the Israeli border with Syria, in the Golan Heights, on August 20, 2026. (credit: AYAL MARGOLIN/FLASH90)
“We believe there should be contact, especially with a party that constantly threatens the security of Syria. But if this contact doesn’t bring results, then we don’t need it,” he said. “We do not trust Israel currently.”
Shaibani’s comments follow Israel’s strike against Syria’s Abu al-Duhur military airfield on Tuesday.
Israel, Syria disagree on threat of Turkish military presence
Two sources told the Post on Saturday that the strike was intended to prevent the placement of a Turkish radar and air defense system.
Shabaini emphasized to Reuters that the Abu al-Duhur was not at risk of becoming a Turkish base and said he believed Israel carried out the strike even after that message was conveyed.
A spokesperson from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, in a statement released on Friday, said Israeli intelligence had identified that Turkish troops were going to be deployed to the base.
The spokesperson claimed that Syria “chose to ignore” warnings from Israel regarding the base prior to the strike.
Corinne Baum, Jerusalem Post Staff, and Reuters contributed to this re
Britain summons envoy to protest E1 settlement project, as does Australia for IDF decision to end investigation of aid workers’ killing, while Europeans condemn Ben Gvir’s Gaza remarks
A sign seized by Israeli police after the protester was arrested, June 6, 2026 (Israel Police Spokesperson)
Israel is facing mounting criticism from several Western allies and the United Nations over a controversial West Bank settlement project, the military’s decision not to probe the killing of aid workers in Gaza, and recent incendiary remarks by a far-right minister.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband summoned Israel’s chargé d’affaires on Wednesday over the government’s decision this week to open bidding for the construction of the long-stalled E1 settlement project east of Jerusalem.
The widely condemned plan would carve up land in the West Bank that the Palestinians seek for a state.
Miliband said he told Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar that “the Israeli government must halt E1 plans immediately, retract the tender and stop all settlement expansion.”
Israel on Tuesday issued a tender for seven residential compounds containing 1,234 housing units in E1, part of some 3,400 homes approved for the area last year. The project would link Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim while disrupting Palestinian territorial contiguity between Bethlehem, East Jerusalem and Ramallah.
The project had been frozen for years due to fierce international opposition, including from previous US administrations. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who championed the plan, said when it was approved last year that it “practically erases the two-state delusion.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends a press conference announcing his plans to approve more than 3,000 housing units in the E1 West Bank settlement project between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim on August 14, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Sa’ar hit back at Miliband’s decision to summon the chargé d’affaires on Thursday.
In a lengthy post on X, the foreign minister said he “reject[s] outright” Miliband’s “patronizing” statement, and asserted that “the Jewish people have the right to live throughout the Land of Israel, just as the British have the right to live in London and throughout the United Kingdom.”
“The UK Government’s systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of antisemitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community,” Sa’ar charged, saying London’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”
Germany also condemned the E1 move, saying it jeopardizes the prospect for a two-state solution.
“Our message is clear: There must be no further steps toward annexation in the West Bank,” said Sebastian Hille, spokesman for the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “No formal ones, but also no political, structural, or other measures whose impact is increasingly and obviously leading toward annexation. They run counter to a two-state solution.”
‘Difficult time’ with Australia
The diplomatic friction extended to Canberra, where Foreign Minister Penny Wong met Israeli Ambassador Hillel Newman on Thursday after summoning him over the IDF’s decision not to pursue a criminal investigation into an April 2024 strike in Gaza that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers, including Australian citizen Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom.
Wong acknowledged after the meeting that it was a “difficult time” in Australia’s relationship with Israel.
“We have an Australian humanitarian worker who was killed not on the first strike, but in the context of three separate strikes on a humanitarian convoy,” Wong told reporters in Canberra after meeting Newman.
Wong said Australia was “outraged” by the decision and had been informed only moments before it was made public on Wednesday, leaving officials unable to notify Frankcom’s family in advance.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (C), Defense Minister Richard Marles (center L) and Foreign Minister Penny Wong (center R) at Parliament House in Canberra on August 19, 2026. (Hilary Wardhaugh/POOL/AFP)
She said Canberra still had “many unanswered questions,” including why the convoy was struck three times, and noted that Australia had repeatedly sought but not received drone footage of the attack.
The April 1, 2024, attack came after Israeli forces incorrectly assessed that Hamas operatives were traveling in the World Central Kitchen vehicles. Seven aid workers were killed. An IDF review led to the dismissal of two officers and several other top commanders.
The Military Advocate General’s office said Wednesday that although there had been failures in the assessment that Hamas operatives were in the vehicles, commanders’ decisions did not cross the threshold for criminal conduct given the suspicious signs and operational circumstances. It therefore found no reasonable suspicion warranting a Military Police investigation.
Wong said Australia did not consider the dismissals and reprimands sufficient accountability for the deaths. Newman said after meeting her that he was “very sorry” for Frankcom’s family, but did not apologize for her killing.
People inspect the site where World Central Kitchen workers were killed in an Israeli air strike in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
“One cannot attack findings of a court if the findings are not suitable to one’s political agenda,” Israel’s envoy said, adding that the finding of no criminal liability came “after two years of independent research.”
Ben Gvir remarks draw condemnation
Separately, Germany, France and the UN sharply condemned National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir over his recent call for Israel to kill scores of people in Gaza every night and his statement that some people there were “not worthy of life.”
Ben Gvir made the remarks in a recent appearance on the podcast of former Palestinian Islamic Jihad hostage Rom Braslavski.
The ultranationalist minister asserted that Israel should be carrying out frequent targeted killings in Gaza, “taking down 30 to 40 every night,” apparently referring to Hamas operatives and other enemies of Israel. He went on to say he did not mean only those posing an immediate threat, adding: “They shouldn’t live” and “They’re not even people.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attends a vote at the plenum hall of the Knesset in Jerusalem, on July 16, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
In Germany, Merz condemned what his spokesman called Ben Gvir’s “inhumane appeals,” saying they violated international law and were “unacceptable.”
German Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil also said the remarks “must have consequences” and that sanctions against Ben Gvir were again being discussed at the European level.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot echoed Germany’s condemnation, calling the remarks “intolerable and inhumane,” while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described them as “appalling,” “dehumanizing” and “dangerous.”
Several European countries have called for EU-wide sanctions against the far-right lawmaker, but the proposal has failed to win the required unanimity.
Calls to blacklist Ben Gvir grew after he published a video in May of himself mocking bound activists seized by Israeli soldiers on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir taunts detained flotilla activists at Ashdod Port on May 20, 2026. (Screen grab/Ben Gvir’s X account)
France, in response to the May video, banned Ben Gvir from entering the country and called for the EU to impose bloc-wide sanctions.
Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway imposed sanctions on both Ben Gvir and Smotrich in June 2025 over accusations that they had incited extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israel struck an air base in northwest Syria early Tuesday, saying it aimed to prevent Turkish troops from deploying there.
Turkey, which has close ties with the Syrian government and has been providing assistance to Syria’s military, has tense relations with Israel. The rival countries have sought to curb each other’s influence in neighboring Syria.
Eight strikes hit the runway of the Abu Duhur air base in the northwestern province of Idlib, causing damage but no casualties, state TV said. Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani told reporters in Damascus that Syria condemns the “Israeli aggression,” adding that the strikes were “an unjustified provocation, a violation of Syria’s sovereignty, and a direct threat to regional and global stability.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that Israel had attacked the base because Syria had been “on the verge of breaching” an agreed-upon “status quo in security matters” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there.
“Israel repeatedly warned Syria that such a deployment would pose a threat to Israel’s security. Syria chose to ignore these warnings,” the statement said.
The Foreign Ministry of Turkey condemned the attack in a statement and called for “the international community to take a more decisive stance to end Israel’s escalating aggression against Syria and to ensure accountability for these actions that disregard international law.”
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said foreign fighters used to stay at the base before they were recently asked to leave. The Observatory added that Turkey, which is a main backer of Syria’s government, has been rehabilitating the air base that had been out of service for years during Syria’s conflict that left nearly half a million people dead.
Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, posted on X that Washington is “deeply concerned that the confirmed Israeli airstrikes” on the Abu Duhur air base constitute “an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.”
The government of Syria’s Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa has neither “adopted a predatory posture nor maintained proxy forces” but has repeatedly indicated a preference for de-escalation with Israel, Barrack said.
The United States has in the past hosted, and will continue in the future to host, discussions to encourage diplomacy, Barrack added.
Regional countries including Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia also issued statements condemning the strikes.
Since the fall of Bashar Assad’s government in December 2024 when insurgents marched into his seat of power in Damascus, tensions between Israel and Turkey over Syria have been on the rise.
Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes around Syria after Assad’s fall, mainly destroying assets of the Syrian army to keep them out of the hands of his successors. The Israeli military also seized control of a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria, which it continues to occupy.
Israeli drone strikes on a southern suburb of Damascus last year killed eight soldiers and wounded others.
The new authorities in Damascus have said they do not want a conflict with Israel, but Israel has remained suspicious of the government led by former Islamist insurgents.
U.S.-mediated talks between Israel and Syria aimed at reaching a security agreement have been ongoing for more than a year but have so far failed to produce a deal.
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Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed.
