Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday told Druze supporters that he spoke with Syria’s leader Ahmed al-Sharaa shortly after Israel, citing the need to protect Syrian Druze, bombed government targets in Damascus last year.

Axar.az informs, citing the Times of Israel, the comments were the first report that a conversation took place between Netanyahu and Syria’s president, who took power in late 2024 after deposing longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.

It may have been the first-ever direct conversation between the leaders of Israel and Syria, which have fought multiple wars and have no diplomatic relations.

Israel, home to some 150,000 Druze, struck the Syrian Defense Ministry and near the presidential palace in Damascus in July 2025 amid sectarian bloodshed in Syria’s predominantly Druze Sweida province.

More than 2,000 people, including 789 Druze civilians, were killed in the fighting between armed Druze factions and Bedouin fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog. Government security forces intervened at the time on the side of the Bedouins and were accused of executing Druze civilians and other abuses.

“I picked up the phone to Sharaa,” Netanyahu said at a conference his Likud party hosted for the Druze community. “It was a very short and very sharp conversation. And the slaughter stopped.”

“I will do everything I can to protect our brothers and your brothers,” he told the conference in the northern Druze town of Yarka.