Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool

Forty percent of Syrians support signing a peace treaty with Israel, according to a recent poll conducted by the Syrian Center for Public Opinion Studies.

A 46 percent plurality of Syrians oppose a peace deal with Israel, while a smaller but still substantial portion of 39.88 support signing such a treaty, according to the poll, which was taken of 2,550 Syrians across all governorates last month. Another 13.76 percent said they were indifferent.

Those who are Kurdish had the highest level of support for a peace agreement, and the heavily Druze governorates of As-Suwayda and Qunaitra showed higher than average levels of support for a peace agreement with Israel.

The higher support in the two Druze governates was due to “the escalation of Israeli rhetoric protecting the Druze minority in the post-Assad era, and the burden borne by the residents of Quneitra Governorate, given their direct contact with Israeli forces, which carry out military incursions without any deterrent at the local, regional, or international levels,” according to the report.

Additionally, the survey found that “the majority of Syrians linked stability and economic prosperity in Syria to normalization with Israel, with more than 70 percent of them believing that normalization would lead to ‘Arab and international investment flowing into Syria,’ thus improving the economic situation.”

At the same time, a clear majority of Syrians (59.25 percent) said they oppose an Israeli embassy in Damascus or a Syrian embassy in Israel, while 23.73 percent support it. Meanwhile, 76 percent responded agreed that Israel is the largest threat to Syria, and 62% said they believe normalization will lead to Israel occupying more Syrian territory.

The survey comes as momentum grows for long-time foes Syria and Israel to normalize relations. US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack called for a non-aggression pact between the two countries during a high-profile visit to Damascus on Thursday.

Barrack’s visit came after about two weeks after US President Donald Trump met with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia, urged him to normalize relations with Israel, and announced in a surprising turn that the US would lift all sanctions on the Syrian government.

Sharaa became Syria’s president after leading the rebel campaign that ousted long-time Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, whose Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war, with an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al Qaeda affiliate. Though previously designated as a terrorist organization by the US, HTS has since rebranded itself as a national force concerned with Syria’s wellbeing.

Following Assad’s fall, Israel conducted military strikes against much of Syria’s weapons arsenals and deployed ground troops to the buffer zone along their border to prevent its northern neighbor from becoming a launching pad for terrorist attacks against Israeli communities.