Pro-Israel rabbi and Trump-linked pastor visit Syria, say peace is possible

Peace between Syria and Israel is "very possible", a Trump-linked evangelical Christian pastor said after he and a pro-Israel American rabbi held talks this week with Syria's Islamist leader Ahmed al-Sharaa at the presidential palace in Damascus.

Rev. Johnnie Moore, a White House adviser during President Donald Trump's first term, and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, from the Jewish human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center, have promoted interfaith dialogue in Arab states for years.

The two men met Sharaa late on Monday during a visit to Syria that they said was not aimed at discussing potential ties with Israel, though the topic came up.

"I think peace is very possible, if not probable, but the first priority has to be Syria focusing on Syria," Moore told Reuters in a phone interview late on Tuesday, after they had concluded their trip.

Sharaa "articulated issues of concern he has, but also the potential for a very positive future", Moore added.

A Syrian presidency media official did not respond to a request for comment.

Since ousting former strongman Bashar al-Assad last year, Syria's Sunni Muslim rulers, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have rapidly built international ties. But tensions persist with religious minority groups inside Syria, such as Druze and Alawites, as well as with neighbouring Israel.

Cooper's visits to nations such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which had no ties with Israel at the time, are credited by some observers with indirectly paving the way for landmark 2020 deals normalising relations.

Efforts by the U.S. to bring more Arab states, chiefly Saudi Arabia, into the deals known as the Abraham Accords have faltered amid regional outrage over the deaths of more than 50,000 Palestinians as a result of Israel's war in Gaza following Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

'UNICORN'

Still, Syria's new rulers have from the outset indicated that they seek calm and even eventual peace with Israel.

Moore and Cooper said they believed Sharaa was uniquely able to deliver on a peace-making agenda.

"The Syrian president is what in Silicon Valley is called a unicorn; he's one of a kind," Moore said.

Cooper added: "What's clear is there is now a window of opportunity to bring about a more positive state of affairs... [though] that doesn't minimize the scale of the task ahead."

Last week, Moore was named as the new executive chairman of the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has begun distributing aid to the Palestinian territory in an operation that uses private U.S. security and logistics companies and has been criticised by the United Nations.

Moore, who has publicly backed Trump's proposal for the United States to take over Gaza, said he did not discuss the GHF and its work with Sharaa during their meeting.

Moore and Cooper proposed to Sharaa joint humanitarian projects "to tear down stereotypes and create an unofficial army of goodwill ambassadors". They declined to give details.

The two men also met with Syrian Christian leaders and walked freely around Damascus, Cooper wearing his yarmulke without issue, he said.

This contrasted with a 2024 visit to Saudi Arabia, where Cooper was asked by a Saudi official to remove his prayer cap, a request he refused, after which the U.S.-Congress mandated delegation he was heading cut short their trip.

Israeli officials initially branded Syria's new rulers as "terrorists" due to their al Qaeda past and the Israeli airforce waged a fierce campaign of aerial bombardment that has subsided since mid-May, when Trump turned decades of U.S. policy on its head by lifting sanctions on Syria and meeting Sharaa in Riyadh.

After meeting Sharaa, Trump said the Syrian leader had agreed to a request to normalize ties with Israel, though it would take time.

Reuters has reported that Syria and Israel in the past weeks held indirect, and then direct talks aimed at calming tensions.