Trump Asks Netanyahu to Redeploy Forces from Syria and Lebanon

President Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call Thursday that Israel should start redeploying its forces out of Syria and urged him to do the same in Lebanon, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. The request adds to growing pressure on the Israeli leader, who is unlikely to take any significant steps to withdraw Israeli forces from territory it occupies in Syria or to allow further redeployments in Lebanon beyond what he's already agreed to.

The Israel Defense Forces currently occupies large parts of southern Lebanon and southern Syria, a presence the government says is needed to prevent another invasion. Senior members of the Israeli government want indefinite control over those areas, and some even push for the establishment of Jewish settlements there. A U.S. official said Trump told Netanyahu that the presence of the Israeli military in Syrian territory creates tensions and could lead to an escalation.

The call between Trump and Netanyahu took place a day after a meeting the president had with his Syrian counterpart, Ahmed al-Sharaa, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey. The Trump administration has spent months trying to reach a new security agreement between Israel and Syria before eventually concluding that Netanyahu doesn't want to make the concessions it sought. Those included gradually withdrawing the IDF from the Syrian territory it has occupied since the collapse of the Assad regime.