Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in Brussels that Israel "welcomes" the planned attendance of his Syrian counterpart at an EU-hosted meeting with Middle East and North African foreign ministers. The gathering, scheduled for 15 July, will be the first time in years that senior Israeli and Syrian diplomats sit in the same forum. Sa’ar told reporters the region’s strategic landscape has changed "following the defeat of the radical axis," a phrase he used for Iran-aligned factions. He added that the new environment could "help advance a broader Abraham-Accords-style alliance of normalisation and peace in the Middle East." Israel and Syria remain formally at war and have no diplomatic relations; Damascus was suspended from the Arab League in 2011 and only began re-engaging with regional forums over the past two years. The EU-MENA meeting aims to discuss economic cooperation and security issues across the Mediterranean.