By Temóris Grecko
No Palestinian organisation mourned the fall / Assad and Israel, “two sides of the same coin”: Palestinian activists.
Listen to this note:
By flying to Moscow after the defeat of his army, Bashar al-Assad admitted the end of the dynasty founded by his father, Hafez, with a coup d'état in 1970: between the two, they ruled for 54 years, of which the last 13 were civil war, which ended in their defeat.
There is certainly great uncertainty about what the country's new leaders will do, whether their statements that their priorities are to overcome war and divisions, and to form a consensus government incorporating different factions and communities, are honest and can be materialized.
There is a dispute of narratives, in any case. From the point of view of Washington and its allies, a dictator has fallen; Syria has been removed as a key link in Iran's strategic scheme, fragmenting it; and Russia has lost a key ally in the Middle East, which also allowed it to maintain its only naval base in the Mediterranean.
On the other side, however, there is no agreement on the interpretation of this historic event. Some celebrate it as the liberation of the Syrian people, who suffered a dictatorship for more than half a century that bloodily oppressed not only Syrians, but also Palestinians and Lebanese.
Others denounce it as the opposite: a military coup promoted by the United States and Israel through Al Qaeda to break the axis of resistance, isolate the Palestinian cause, which al-Assad defended, and subjugate the Lebanese, whom Syria protected, with the support of Russia and Iran.
How much of this is true?
The Assad regime and the Palestinian cause
Not a single major Palestinian organisation regretted the fall of al-Assad. On the contrary, they expressed their support for the decisions of the Syrian people.
The Palestinian Authority said it stands by the Syrian people, “respecting their will and political choices, in order to ensure their security and stability and preserve their achievements.”
The Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement congratulated the Syrian people for achieving their “aspirations for freedom and justice.” “We firmly support the great people of Syria… and respect the will, independence and political choices of the Syrian people.” It added that it hopes Syria will continue “its historic and fundamental role in supporting the Palestinian people.”
Palestinian Islamic Jihad said the recent developments are a Syrian issue that relates to the “elections of the brotherly Syrian people.”
The Palestinian National and Islamic Forces in Damascus said they “sincerely hope for the right of the Syrian people to determine their future and build a unified and fully sovereign Syria within a framework of freedom, justice, democracy and equal citizenship without discrimination.”
And the people?
The New Arab portal He titled this note like this: “Even as they face genocide, Palestinians celebrate Syria’s liberation from Assad.” It opens with this paragraph: “Amid congratulations and tears, Palestinians were predominantly joyful over Syria’s liberation from Bashar al-Assad’s regime after more than five decades of dictatorial rule against the Syrian people. Many Palestinians described to The New Arab that the events in Syria were “a true victory over injustice, tyranny and corruption.”
What is the reason for the distancing, and even the celebration, regarding the tragic end of a regime that supposedly supported the Palestinian cause?
That was all a lie, the opposite of what the al-Assads had done for half a century.
Dima Khatib is a Syrian-born Palestinian, the daughter of refugees. She is the director of AJ+, a channel of the Al Jazeera network. On December 5, she gave a lecture at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico on Israel’s extermination of Palestinian journalists. That evening, I had dinner with her and Al Jazeera correspondent John Holman. On the 7th, as Dima was flying back to Qatar, Bashar al-Assad was “evacuated” to Russia.
On the 12th, the journalist published this video about what she calls her “double exile”: she was prevented from going both to her homeland, Palestine, by the Israelis; and to the land of her birth, Syria, by the al-Assad regime. In it, she recalls the repressive environment she experienced as a child, which made her fear that her thoughts would be discovered; she denounces that the Syrian government murdered thousands of Palestinians to stifle resistance against Israel, and that during the revolution, it killed and imprisoned many more; and she points out that al-Assad “never confronted Israel despite having lost the Golan Heights” (Syrian territory that Israel invaded and annexed) and allowed “Israel to bomb Syria in recent years without doing anything about it.”
On the latter, it should be noted that the Israeli Air Force has been able to attack targets in Syria for years without receiving a response, even though Syria had the means to shoot down its aircraft since 2016, when Russia deployed its most modern anti-aircraft defense platforms, the S-400 and S-300, in the country (it withdrew them in recent days).
Dima goes on to say that “some passionate supporters of the Palestinian cause are reluctant to share the joy of Syrians liberated from Assad’s brutality, because they imagine it is some kind of setback for Palestine on a geopolitical chessboard. But that way of looking at it dehumanizes Syrians in the same way that we point out that media coverage dehumanizes Palestinians.”
Dima concludes: “The same values that make you support the Palestinians should also apply to the Syrians. They are human beings who deserve to breathe after enduring so much suffering at the hands of one of the most brutal regimes ever known.”
(At the end of this text, I will put the complete transcript of your video).
On December 7, I was able to witness the moment when Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah – who was a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization – received the unexpected news of al-Assad’s fall by telephone. We were with Iraqi writer Samuel Shimon and Palestinian academic Shadi Rohana, who did me the favor of translating Nouri’s brief interview with him, to record his first impressions of what had happened (You can find it here).
In the following days, I continued talking to him, letting emotions and ideas settle. In the following days, I will publish a chronicle about his life and his notions of exile and return. But I will give a preview of some of what is related to this topic.
Al-Jarrah was forced to go into hiding in Syria when, together with other comrades from the Syrian Communist Party, he denounced that the Syrian army and the Christian Phalangist militias of Lebanon, allied with Israel, had attacked the Palestinian refugee camp of Tal es-Zaatar in Beirut in 1976 (see description at the end of the text), killing some 2,000 people and wounding 4,000 more. Nouri then escaped to Lebanon, where he found that the Syrian government, through the Shiite militia Amal, continued to harass the Palestinians.
In 1974, with the mediation of the United States, Israel and Syria signed a “deconfliction” agreement, which only the latter has respected, while Israel has systematically violated it, first of all with the annexation of the Syrian territory of the Golan in 1981, and also with its air strikes that have become almost daily in the last decade.
“The price of the regime’s permanence was to remain silent in the face of the occupation of the Golan,” says Nouri, and to suppress Palestinian resistance against Israel in both Syria and Lebanon.
“For us, as Syrians, the Palestinian cause is a fundamental part of our construction as human beings, existentially, culturally. Personally, I have lived the Palestinian experience and I consider myself a Palestinian,” the poet claims. “But for the last 13 years, the Israeli neighbor protected the Syrian regime from the revolution. Israel never attacked the weapons arsenals (of the army) because it knew that these weapons were being used against the Syrian people, they destroyed cities in their entirety. And now, once the regime fell, we see the State of Israel bombing the weapons factories, the military bases, the ships, everything that has to do with the weapons that Syria has had, because this dictatorial regime has behaved for many years like a wall defending the State of Israel from the opposition or from others. Why did Israel not attack Syria and those specific places before the fall of Israel? Because before these weapons were not going to be used against Israel and now it is not known.”
In media outlets more committed to the Palestinian cause - but not connected to Russia or Iran - such as the Middle East Monitor, there are articles explaining that the Assads actually protected Israel.
Like this one, from Gaza journalist Motassem A Dalloul“As a Palestinian, I consider Assad not only a guardian of Israel, but its defender. The Assad family, which belongs to the Alawite minority, exploited the perceived hostility towards the Israeli occupation to reinforce its authoritarian regime, which was based on the oppression of Syrians, suppressing their freedoms and deterring any real attempt to fight the Israeli occupation.”
Under the 1974 agreement, “the first of its kind between Israel and Arab regimes,” he continues, “the Assad regime turned Syria into a buffer zone between Israel and Arab and Muslim nations, using its relationship with Iran as a pretext to suppress any attempts at resistance against Israel.”
As early as November 2023, when the genocide was just beginning, Palestinian activists denounced al-Assad's criticism of Israel as “hypocritical” because their actions were the same, and said that the Syrian and Israeli regimes were “two sides of the same coin”.
Al Qaeda won with HTS and the Democrats won with Trump
The head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, Levant Liberation Organisation), the leading militia of the groups that defeated the regime, has abandoned his nom de guerre, Abu Mohamed al-Julani, in favour of Ahmed Hussein al-Shara. This is one of several signals he has been sending out to convince people that the Islamist fighter is transforming into a statesman, ready to govern in an inclusive way for the entire Syrian population, regardless of their ethnic or religious origin. How much of this is true? Will he contain the Salafist fundamentalism that he once championed? Will he give in to the intentions of his great ally, Turkey, to destroy Kurdish autonomy in the north-east of the country? Or will he understand that the way to pacify Syria is to generate agreements through consensus and tolerance? We will find out sooner or later.
The Russians and Iranians will not wait to find out, however. Old statements by US officials serve to describe al-Qaeda as a tool of Washington; and al-Julani's former membership in al-Qaeda and his relationship with the assassinated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, founder of the Islamic State (the organisation that some still call ISIS although it abandoned that name nine years ago) are sufficient grounds for them to claim that it is al-Qaeda that has seized power, by design of the United States and Israel.
Throughout the 21st century, Al Qaeda has served as an ogre to scare the unwary. Although, as a fundamentalist Sunni, it was an enemy of Saddam Hussein's secular Sunni regime in Iraq, Washington accused it of being its ally. It also did the same with Iran, although here the animosity is much greater, because for 16 centuries, Sunnis have considered Shiites, like the Ayatollahs of Tehran, to be heretics, traitors to the true religion. Israel has also maintained that Al Qaeda and the Islamic State control Palestinian organizations.
Russia also denounces Al Qaeda's involvement with all its Muslim enemies, both in Chechnya and Dagestan and in Syria.
In this case, his narrative goes so far as to present al-Julani and his HTS as representatives of both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Although the latter, who was part of Al Qaeda, became the biggest butcher of his former coreligionists when he split from it. He hunted down and hunted down thousands of Al Qaeda members and sympathizers in Syria, Iraq and other countries. You either belong to one or the other, it is impossible to belong to both.
Al Julani broke with Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State who declared himself caliph, in April 2013. Eleven years ago, almost twelve. He became his mortal enemy by maintaining his loyalty to Al Qaeda. Although that did not last long either: he left in 2016, eight years ago. Since then, his organization has changed its name and alliances several times until it took on its current name, HTS, and became linked to Turkey, which, according to the Turks, he kept informed of its movements.
None of this pleased either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. In January 2017, the merger of several militias to form HTS was preceded by attacks by the former, and for the next three years, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham waged a military campaign against both enemies in the Syrian province of Idlib, which it managed to bring under its control, establishing a local government. In 2022, HTS ideologue Abu Maria al-Qahtani issued a statement demanding the dissolution of Al Qaeda.
Even though he now claims respectability, dresses in civilian clothes and has reverted to his old name al-Shara, the HTS leader is responsible for serious human rights violations committed by his fighters, in addition to the background of the extremist ideology he espoused. All of this is worrying.
But attributing allegiance to Al Qaeda - and, moreover, to the Islamic State - is as credible as claiming that Donald Trump is actually an instrument of the Democratic Party, since he was a member of it until 2001.
Syrians and Phalangists in the Tal al-Zaatar massacre
On August 12, 1976, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut was stormed by Christian militias and Syrian troops after a 52-day siege. The death toll ranges from 1,500 to 2,000, many of them civilians; some 4,000 were wounded and thousands more displaced. The camp, known as Tal al-Zaatar (Thyme Hill), was one of the last strongholds of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the Christian-dominated area of East Beirut.
The siege began in January 1976, when Christian militias, led by the Phalangists of the Lebanese Front (LF) and allied with Israel, launched a campaign to expel Palestinians from northern Beirut, where they wanted to impose their hegemony. The Palestinians, for their part, saw Lebanon as a base for their fight against Israel and supported the Muslim and leftist forces of the Lebanese National Movement (LNM). The camp was fortified by the PLO and housed some 20,000 refugees.
The FL did not have enough strength to take the camp. The balance changed in June 1976, when the Syrian army intervened on the side of the besiegers and launched a brutal assault. The Syrians bombarded the camp with artillery and tanks, while Christian militias surrounded it and cut off water and electricity. The defenders resisted using homemade weapons and tunnels. The camp was subjected to constant bombing, sniping and starvation. Many refugees died from wounds, disease or malnutrition. Some committed suicide or were executed by their captors. Others managed to escape or surrender, but faced further violence or humiliation.
The fall of Tal al-Zaatar on August 12 marked a turning point in the Lebanese civil war. It completed the partition of Lebanon between the Muslims of the south and the Christians of the north. It also weakened the PLO's presence and influence in Lebanon and paved the way for the Israeli invasion in 1982. The massacre remained etched in Palestinian national consciousness and identity, as a symbol of their suffering and resistance, as well as a source of inspiration and solidarity.
The history of Tal al-Zaatar has been immortalized in several artistic works. The camp was dubbed “the capital of the poor” by Iraqi poet Muzaffar al-Nawab, who wrote a famous poem about it. The camp has also been depicted in films, novels, paintings and songs by Palestinian and Arab artists. The memory of Tal al-Zaatar is still alive among survivors and their descendants, who commemorate its anniversary every year.
“Double Exile” by Dima Khatib (full transcript)
The al-Assad regime in Syria: Was it pro-Palestinian? Was it brought down by al-Qaeda?
As a Palestinian, I have been attacked for celebrating the end of the Assad regime.
The problem is that I am Syrian and Palestinian,
I am actually half Palestinian and of course I would celebrate it.
This is one of the most important moments of my life.
My mother is from Damascus, my father is a Palestinian refugee dispossessed in 1948.
He lived and died in exile.
I was born and raised in Damascus.
I was never allowed to enter Palestine even for a visit.
And since the Syrian revolution in 2011, I have also been banned from entering Syria.
Double exile.
When I was 10 or 11 years old, the school bus used to stop at Abbasid Square,
in the center of Damascus, so that we could all see two or three men hanging from a rope,
Their bodies wrapped in a white cloth,
and also with their faces covered.
They would have executed them at dawn and left them for us to see around 6:30 am.
The bus driver would say:
“Do you see children?
This is what happens if you don't do what you're told."
We all sat still on the bus,
trembling inside and out,
without saying a word when they told us to be quiet.
We all had to do
what we were told.
Everywhere, all the time.
Our parents too, our neighbors,
our relatives,
everyone.
I remember my heart always beating with fear and I was afraid that someone might hear it and make fun of me for it.
As a child, I was afraid to think because I worried that someone would find out my thoughts and my family would be punished for having them.
But wasn't the Assad regime anti-Israel and pro-Palestine?
If you ask me, I would say yes and no.
As a Palestinian, I received free education and healthcare. I would say that Syria was the best of the three countries that received many Palestinian refugees.
Egypt was the worst, Lebanon was in the middle, and Syria was the best.
But we had to be loyal to Assad's Ba'ath party, like all Syrians.
However, the regime never confronted Israel.
despite having lost the Golan Heights
and having allowed Israel to bomb Syria,
from time to time,
sometimes daily, in recent years,
without doing anything about it.
In fact, the regime's security forces have been responsible for the deaths of many thousands of Palestinians over the years,
through direct attacks in both Lebanon and Syria,
in an attempt to suppress independent Palestinian resistance to Israel.
Many hundreds more Palestinians have been killed in the course of the regime's suppression of the Syrian uprising.
There are many Palestinians among those detained in Syrian prisons,
Not because they have committed a crime or done something illegal,
They are all prisoners of conscience,
arbitrarily held for years or even decades in dungeons.
What is the difference between them?
and the Palestinians held by Israel under administrative detention?
Palestinians in Damascus' Yarmouk refugee camp suffered from hunger during the revolution. Some were thrown into holes in the ground and executed en masse in the infamous Tadamon massacre in 2013.
What is the difference between them?
and the Palestinians of Gaza today?
When I see families reunited and detainees released,
I know how they feel.
I see that some of you can't believe it, you are very surprised to be released.
It's a miracle!
I know the fear they must have had inside.
My father left Syria after life had become unbearable in the late 1980s,
under the rule of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father.
He was head of the Arabic Language Department at the Faculty of Humanities at Damascus University.
One of the teachers dared to deny entry to a student
for arriving more than 10 minutes late to the auditorium.
There were 400 students present.
The student turned out to be the son of a military intelligence officer. He returned with two bodyguards and the teacher was subjected to physical and verbal abuse in front of the entire class.
He arrived at my father's office bleeding, with his glasses broken,
with torn clothes.
My father said:
If I can't protect the professors in my department,
then there is nothing we can teach the students.
My heart is beating hard again.
He left Syria for Yemen.
Double exile.
Now some passionate supporters of the Palestinian cause
They are reluctant to share the joy of Syrians liberated from Assad's brutality,
because they imagine that it is some kind of setback for Palestine on a geopolitical chessboard.
But that way of looking at it dehumanizes Syrians.
just as we point out that media coverage dehumanizes Palestinians.
Syrians are not just a factor in a game of geopolitical chess.
Syria is not just a piece of land that happens to be strategically located on the map.
The same values that make you support the Palestinians
should also apply to Syrians.
They are human beings who deserve to breathe after enduring so much suffering at the hands of one of the most brutal regimes ever known.
His overthrow does not mean that tomorrow will be perfect in Syria.
It does not mean that this change is good for Palestine.
It may not be in the short term.
You can still share the joy
without applauding Syria's new leaders.
Syrians have paid with 13 years of blood and tears
to earn the right
and the freedom to choose, as a people.
Just as the Palestinians continue to do.
They can teach us something we don't expect.
As for me,
I am overwhelmed with joy.
Now I can return to Syria.
At least one of my two homelands
is accessible.
This text was originally published in: OPEN WORLD
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