On January 6, Israeli and Syrian leaders met in Paris for US-sponsored talks which saw Syria’s Islamist president Ahmed al-Sharaa reach a tentative agreement aimed at a lasting security accord with Tel Aviv. That same day, the first shots were fired in a blitzkrieg offensive that has seen al-Sharaa’s forces seize 80 percent of the territory formerly held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The move has brought war to the gates of the Kurdish regions known as Rojava, and forced the SDF to accept an unfavorable ceasefire and integration agreement.

These two reversals are closely related, Syrian Kurdish political leaders say. Especially since former al-Qaeda affiliate al-Sharaa seized power from Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Israeli politicians have paid lip service to the plight of two million Kurds now besieged in isolated towns. Meanwhile, certain Syrian Kurdish leaders started to view Israeli opposition to al-Sharaa as a potential counterweight to the Syrian president’s designs on Rojava, issuing Hail Mary appeals to Tel Aviv for support.

But on a geostrategic level, Israel appears cautiously content with al-Sharaa, who is moving toward normalizing the Israeli occupation in his country’s south while positioning himself as a key player in the United States’ anti-Iranian coalition. The new Sunni strongman in Damascus has offered Israel and the West an irresistible combination of acquiescent foreign policy and tight control of domestic politics, leaving the Kurds out in the cold once more.