Netanyahu reveals conversation with Syrian president on Drusa protection

O israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today revealed that he spoke on the phone with the current President of Syria in July 2025, to “send a clear message” to stop the deaths of Drusa minority members in the country.

This was the first time that the head of the Israeli Government spoke about this conversation, which occurred months after Ahmad al-Sharaa came to power after overthrowing the then dictator Bashar al-Assad at the end of 2024.

This direct link between the two may also be the first of its kind in the history of both countries.

“I called Al-Sharaa. It was a brief but very intense conversation, and the killing of the Druzes stopped,” said the Prime Minister during a party conference, Likud, addressed precisely to members of this minority, according to reports from The Times of Israel, quoted by the Spanish agency Europa Press.

This conversation took place shortly after Netanyahu ordered a series of attacks on Damascus and other areas of the country, which, he said today, aimed to “protect the Druze in southern Syria in the context of the sectarian conflict that was going on.”.

“I will do everything I can to protect our brothers and sisters,” he explained.

Since then, the governments of both countries have been holding talks on a security agreement, while the Syrian authorities insist on demanding the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the buffer zone at the border under Israeli control since the fall of Al-Assad.

During these attacks, Israeli forces claimed to have attacked the military headquarters of the then interim Syrian government in Damascus, as well as the vicinity of the presidential palace. The Syrian Ministry of Defense headquarters was destroyed by an Israeli missile.

The province of Sweida, mostly Drusa, in southern Syria, was the scene of a week of bloody clashes between Bedouin Druze and Sunni in July 2025, which the authorities reinforced.

More than 2,000 people were killed, including 789 Druze civilians, according to the Syrian Human Rights Observatory (SOHR), while a committee set up by the Syrian Government recorded 1,760 dead.

At the time, government forces and their allies were accused of civil executions and other abuses.

Israel, home to over 150,000 Druzes, intervened in 2025 bombarding government forces in the name of community defense.

Syrian government troops then withdrew from the city of Sweida and part of the province with the same name, maintaining a fragile ceasefire. Damascus stated since then that he began to judge suspects of violence.

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, ally of Iran and the pro-Iranian group Hezbollah, Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks in Syria and has sent troops to a buffer zone controlled by the UN that separates Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Hills since 1974.

He also repeatedly carried out deeper raids on Syrian territory, sometimes capturing residents, and promised to keep troops in the south of the country, where he demanded the establishment of a demilitarized zone.