DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an extremist group with direct affiliations to Al-Qaeda and Daesh, is reportedly engaged in negotiations with Israel to reach a security agreement that would see Israeli forces withdraw from territories occupied since the December overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. 
Following HTS’s takeover of Syria on December 8, Israel swiftly moved troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights—a volatile frontier that has separated Zionist and Syrian forces since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war armistice. 
Israel has intensified its military aggression, launching hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military infrastructure and conducting deep incursions into southern Syria, devastating vital facilities and displacing civilians.
Despite this sustained bombardment and ongoing occupation, the HTS-led regime headed by former Daesh in Iraq commander Abu Muhammad al-Jolani has refrained from retaliating militarily. Instead, it appears to be seeking a form of normalization with Israel by opening negotiations aimed at formalizing a security arrangement. 
According to Jolani, talks are underway to restore Israeli forces to positions they held prior to December 8, 2024.
“Israel assumed that with the fall of the previous regime, Syria would abandon the 1974 disengagement agreement,” Jolani said in an interview with state-run Alekhbariah TV. “But from the outset, HTS has expressed its commitment to maintaining this accord.” 
The unexpected diplomatic overture follows reports last month of a secret meeting in Paris between HTS foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani and Israeli strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer, discussing de-escalation efforts and the complex situation in the Druze-majority Sweida province, which has suffered sectarian violence.
Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly acknowledged ongoing talks with the HTS regime.
The HTS’s willingness to negotiate with Israel amid relentless Israeli airstrikes highlights a complex and paradoxical reality: an extremist regime with a violent takfiri past now seeks diplomatic engagement with the very entity whose military occupation continues to devastate Syrian sovereignty and infrastructure.