We, Syrians united in the revolutionary struggle against the Assad regime and its imperialist sponsors, stand firmly and unequivocally with the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank and across historic Palestine, in their fight for liberation from Israeli colonisation, occupation and apartheid.
The scale of the current violence in Gaza is unprecedented. A besieged population is trapped under bombardment with no safe space to flee to. Close to 10,000 have been killed in the Israeli onslaught, more than 3760 of whom are children, as thousands more remain trapped under rubble. Hospitals, schools and homes have been deliberately targeted. Prohibited weapons such as white phosphorus have been used against a civilian population, in the most densely populated place on earth. Water, electricity and food supplies have been cut and aid is not getting to those in need. Hospitals, overflowing with the injured, are on the brink of collapse. Israel has been given a green light for this slaughter by western states as the Arab dictatorships stand by. In the West Bank, scores of Palestinians have been killed in recent days, as occupation forces and settlers try to drive more people from their homes, and attacks on and arrests of Palestinians have increased across historic Palestine. And we remember those Palestinians languishing in prison, hostages to the Israeli occupation.
Yet this Israeli war against the Palestinian people did not start on 7 October. It dates back to the signing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the subsequent expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians from their land since 1948. The Palestinian cause started with the occupation of Palestine by the settler colony of Israel which has since perpetuated massacres, mass expulsion, erasure, detention and apartheid rule against the Palestinian indigenous population. We fear such measures and more land-grabs will increase under the current far-right government in Israel which has made very clear its racism, savagery and genocidal intent.
Our solidarity is rooted in our inherent humanity and shared culture, history and heritage. Prior to the British and French occupations and advent of the modern nation states within Sykes-Picot borders, the peoples of bilad ash-sham were closely connected. Since the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands in 1948, we Syrians have adopted the Palestinian cause as our own. This has been reflected in our poetry, music, civic discourse and armed resistance. Syrians welcomed Palestinian refugees as they arrived in our cities, and Palestinians in Syria became embedded within the fabric of our society.
Whilst the Syrian people have always stood with the Palestinian cause, the Assad regime has used it as a rhetorical tool which, far from liberating Palestine, has instead led to increased oppression within Syria’s borders.
During the 1967 war, as defence minister, Hafez al-Assad ordered the Syrian army to retreat from the Golan Heights before any Israeli troops had arrived. The Syrian Golan has been subject to brutal Israeli occupation and colonisation, severed from the Syrian homeland and intentionally marginalised by the Assad regime and wider region. The Golan Heights remain confined by Israeli colonisation, the genocidal Assad regime and geo-political schemes.
When the Lebanese civil war erupted, Hafez al-Assad loudly declared Syria’s support for the Palestinian-Muslim-Leftist alliance against the pro-Israel Falangists. But when the Falangists appeared at risk of defeat in 1976, Assad ordered the Syrian army to intervene against the pro-Palestinian alliance. The Assad regime slaughtered up to 1500 Palestinian civilians in camps in Lebanon, most notably at Tel Za’atar.
At home, the regime declared a State of Emergency which suspended Syrians’ political and civil rights in the name of resistance to Israel, all the while carefully protecting the false border with the occupied Golan Heights. Both Syrians and Palestinians were arrested if they dared take any cultural, political or military initiative against the Israeli occupation. One case is that of Tal al-Mallouhi, a Syrian teenager who blogged in support of Palestine. She wrote articles and poems which encouraged Syrians, Arabs and Muslims to do more to help Palestinians. For this ‘crime’, the Assad regime threw her in prison in 2009. She remains in prison today.
When our revolution erupted, Syrians and Palestinians in Syria stood shoulder to
shoulder. We worked together to supply food and medicine to besieged communities, to organise strikes and marches, and to build democratic alternatives to the murderous regime.
Because Palestinians and Syrians stood together for freedom and dignity, the Assad
regime attacked Palestinian camps as fiercely as it assaulted Syrian cities. The Palestinian camp in Daraa and the Raml camp in Lattakia were among those bombed and besieged.
The Yarmouk camp, on the outskirts of Damascus, was known as ‘the capital of the
Palestinian diaspora’. Its residents initially adopted a position of neutrality in the revolution, but for many that changed in May 2011 when the regime encouraged Palestinians to demonstrate on the Golan border to commemorate the Nakba and
then failed to intervene as youth were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. In December 2012, the Abdul Qadir Al Husseini mosque, was shelled by regime warplanes, killing many of the internally displaced people who were sheltering inside. A five-year siege was imposed on the camp and residents were subjected to slow starvation and a lack of essential supplies. Comparisons were made at the time with the brutal Israeli (and Egyptian) imposed siege on Gaza. Following intense bombardment in April 2018 which destroyed much of the camp’s infrastructure, families were forcibly displaced, for many this was a second Nakba. Scores are now prevented from returning, as their homes have been expropriated under new ‘development’ plans from which regime loyalists benefit – despite the objections of former residents.
The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) has documented 4,048 Palestinians killed in Syria since 2011. Of these, 614 died under torture in regime prisons and 205 died due to the siege on Yarmouk camp. Others were killed by regime bombing or execution by regime loyalists.
We do not wish to centre ourselves, but expose the interconnectedness of our struggles. Syrians feel deep solidarity with the Palestinian plight, one which comes from the shared experience of resistance to tyranny, a desire for freedom and self-determination, and the trauma of war. In towns and cities across the country, Syrians have taken to the streets to protest the genocide currently underway in Gaza and show solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. In Aleppo, doctors, who have faced the regime and Russia’s targeting of hospitals, have protested against Israel’s targeting of hospitals in the Gaza Strip. In Idlib, humanitarian workers, who know what it is like to pull children from the rubble, stood to show their solidarity. In Sweida, where daily protests continue against the regime, the Palestinian flag flew high. Numerous towns in northwestern Syria have taken to the streets for Palestine, despite a serious military escalation over the past month and being subjected to daily bombing including the use of white phosphorus by the regime on civilian homes. Northwestern Syria is currently facing the most intensified bombardment by the regime since 2020, wherein over 120,000 Syrians have been internally displaced in the last month alone.
In the diaspora, we have joined protests in the countries of our exile. We know the experience of displacement and dispossession – we have lived a Nakba of our own. Syrians stand with Gaza because we share the horror and pain of state violence – we mourn every Palestinian death as our own.
We are outraged, but not surprised, by the response of the ‘international community’ and its lack of meaningful action to immediately stop the massacre in Gaza. Syrians faced the same silence and betrayal when calling for a no-fly zone to cease the number of deaths, in the earlier years of the revolution. Despite campaigns, the call fell on deaf ears and we were left to fend for our own.
We Syrians, call for an immediate ceasefire and a just resolution to the Palestinian question, rooted in self-determination and the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. We are appalled by the hasbara, Israeli narratives and ‘War on Terror’ discourse which seek to dehumanise Palestinians, de-legitimise the Palestinian resistance and justify the Israeli onslaught, and recall the way the regime, Russia and Iran use similar methods to discredit our struggle. We reject disinformation spread by propagandists, conspiracy theories and racists with which we ourselves are too familiar with. We condemn those who have stood with the Syrian struggle but fail to stand with our brothers and sisters in Palestine, and those who support the Palestinian resistance but fail to support Syria’s struggle for freedom.
Mutual and intersectional solidarity is essential, our struggles are one, our freedom each depends on the freedom of the other.
Signed:
- Razan Saffour, Editor/MENA Advocacy
- Robin-Yassin Kassab, Writer
- Leila Al Shami, Writer/Activist
- Yassin Haj Saleh, Writer
- Walid Saffour, Syrian Human Rights Committee
- Maher Arar
- Leila Nachawati, Professor of Communications
- Qutaiba Idlbi
- Bassam Al-Kuwatli
- Yasser Munif, Emerson College
- Obayda Ghadban, Researcher and Translator
- Rafif Jouejati, Human Rights Defender
- Ibrahim Fakhri, Artist
- Zaher Sahloul, Syria Faith Initiative
- Marcelle Shehwaro, Writer
- Karam Shaar
- Ayah Kutmah, Writer and Researcher
- Weyam Ghadbian, Conflict Transformation Facilitator
- Bayan Boulad, Grad Student, City University of New York School of Public Health
- Yasmeen Mobayed, PhD Student
- Sumayya Saleh, Civil Rights Attorney
- Yazan Al Saadi
- Dellair Youssef, Writer
- Shiyam Galyon
- Sama Kiki, Advocate
- Lina Shamy
- Yusuf Mousa
- Sarah Hunaidi, Writer and Advocacy Consultant
- Bashar Deeb, Journalist
- Yazan Badran, Researcher
- Mohja Kahf, Ph.D., Professor
- Ramah Kudaimi, Activist
- Amina Olabi, Public Health Researcher
- Lina Baroudi, Attorney
- Laila Alrefaai, Researcher and Writer
- Dima Nachawi, Artist
- Ahmad Abushaar, Molham Team
- Jad Baghdadi, PhD Candidate, University of Oxford
- Ala Ayoubi, Pharmacist
- Rami Jarrah, Journalist
- Karim Jian, Doctor
- Mustafa Alachkar, Doctor
- Fouad Roueiha, Syrian-Italian Journalist and Translator
- Lyn Al Masri, Software Engineer
- Ayham Abdulwali, Advocacy Specialist
- Mohammad Abu Hajar, PhD Candidate
- Yasser Almaamoun, Architect
- Dr. Razan Ghazzawi, Oregon State University
- Sami Haddad, Teacher and Activist
- Mohanad Mahdi, Engineer
- Osama Zein Al-Abdeen, Humanitarian Worker
- Mahmoud Kutmah, Medical Student
- Huda Kutmah, Medical Student
- Sara Mahdi, Virginia Public University Student
- Mayssoun O, Communications Director
- Rami Zahrawi Haj-Younes, Humanitarian Worker and Investigator
- Khuloud Alsaba, Researcher
- Dr. Banah Ghadbian
- Yazan Awad
- Abdallah Al Shaar, Documentary Filmmaker and Writer
- Muaz Mehiş
- Aghyan Alzuabi
- Abdulrahman alkilany
- Rami al-Safadi
- Abeedah Diab
- Ghalia Albarazi
- Maya Daas
- Elham Makansy
- Masah Barakat
- Bashar Alhor
- Mohammad Ali Madanieh
- Patool Kutmah, Student
- Zainab Alhaj
- Duaa Nabhan, Student
- Safi Ghazal, Syrian Revolution Activist
- Bushra Alakraa, Projects Manager
- Karim Al Afan
- Suzan Boulad, Attorney
- Ammar Z, Support Worker
- Omar Issa, Software Engineer
- Sulima Asaad, Student
- Zouhir Al Shimale, Valent Projects
- Loay Alhamedi, Activist
- Ahmad Sadiddin, Economist
- Sameer S, Lawyer & Legal Affairs Director
- Rama Shoukfeh, Mental Health Therapist
- Salina Abaza, Artist
- Yara Maaz
- Karim Shoorbajee
- Rana Al-Nahhas
- Maya Mahdi
- Tareq Samman
- Hannah Achkar
- Sami Al Nazer
- Ibrahim Yassin
- Amal Alachkar
- Ahmad Mohamad, Human Rights Activist
- Yazan Affash, Student
- Baraa Kanj
- Bayan Heri
- Abdulgadir Hamo
- Sama Heri
- Yasmin Sheikh
- Osama Asaad
- Abdelmajed Alkhatib, Student
- Raafat Alsakal
- Boushkin Mohamad Ali
- Saphe Shamoun
- Almousa Bara, Student
- Ahmed Haj Ahmed, Student
- Amer Munawwar
- Ahmad Alsoliman
- Noor Albarazi, Student
- Amana Albarazi, Student
- Laila Sadiddin, Student
- Walid Nader, Student
- Abdullah Alhusin, Activist
- Ahmad Hadeda
- Moro Alali, Activist
- Monaf Almaiedy, Student
- Abdelrahman Elbanna, Academic
- Mo Abboud
- Almourad Aldeeb, Student
- Ayah, Student
- El Awan
- Rania H
- Livia L
- Fadi
- Eman
- Sabri