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Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa recounted for the first time a striking exchange he said he had with U.S. President Donald Trump over the occupied Golan Heights, saying he joked that Trump should give New Jersey to Israel instead.
Sharaa made the remarks Tuesday during an Atlantic Council panel in New York while responding to a question on the Trump administration’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
“I made a joke with him when he said the Golan Heights is within the sovereignty of Israel,” Sharaa said.
“I said, why don’t you give New Jersey to the Israelis? You don’t own Golan Heights to give it to them, but you own New Jersey, and I believe that New Jersey is full of Democrats, and they are not voting for Trump. So it will be good to give it to the Israelis,” he added.
Sharaa visited the White House last November, the first visit by a Syrian head of state since the country’s independence in 1946.
He previously met Trump in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in May 2025, shortly before Washington lifted Caesar sanctions.
Israel has occupied most of Syria’s Golan Heights since the June 1967 war and expanded its occupation after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in late 2024.
On Dec. 8, 2024, Israel declared the collapse of the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria and occupied the Syrian buffer zone, while Damascus said it remained committed to the agreement.
Sharaa said Syria and Israel had nearly reached 90% agreement in negotiations on a security framework before Israel pulled back or introduced additional conditions.
“There were several sessions of negotiations with Israel, and we almost reached 90% of agreements,” Sharaa said, adding that Israel at that point withdrew from the agreement for “different reasons.”
“Since the fall of the former regime, Israel is repeating its attacks and aggressions against Syria. It is occupying new territories,” he said, adding that Israel continues to carry out incursions, arrests and bombings inside Syria.
“Syria still chose to go through diplomacy and to solve that problem through talk and negotiations,” he added.
“We are still engaging in this track,” Sharaa said, “but we need to protect the security and the rights of the Syrians. Before that, we can’t talk about peace.”
Sharaa said direct talks with Israel began around a year ago, with Damascus first demanding that Israel withdraw to the lines it held in 1974 before any discussion of security arrangements.
“If those arrangements succeeded, then we can get into discussions about lasting peace,” he said.
“The Golan Heights is Syrian territory under the recognition of the United Nations,” Sharaa said. “So there is no discussion about that territory and to whom it belongs.”
He also proposed an international committee to assess Israel’s security concerns and “verify what is only a perception and what are genuine concerns.”
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