When the wounded Yahya Sinwar threw a stick at the Zionist war machine, resisting even in the final moments of his life, he embodied the unbreakable Palestinian cause for liberation. Through 75 years of relentless brutality, we Palestinians have remained steadfast in our quest for freedom in our land.
Our resistance endures because it is motivated by a profound truth: the struggle for Palestinian liberation is inseparable from the universal struggle for human dignity. It is this commitment to collective freedom, rather than narrow national interests, that has both sustained Palestinian resistance and sparked a growing wave of global solidarity.
That is why, as we Palestinians watch Syrians flood the streets of Damascus, Aleppo, Hama and Homs, tasting freedom for the first time in generations, our hearts are filled with complex emotions: sorrow for those who have been lost, hope for what might be possible, and an unwavering commitment to our own liberation.
Some now claim that the Palestinian cause is weakened by the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and that our liberation struggle somehow rested on his iron grip on Syria. They speak of “axes of resistance” and geopolitical necessity. But they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of our struggle.
The Palestinian cause has never depended on dictators oppressing their own people. Our resistance never needed those who murdered Palestinian refugees, who imprisoned our fighters, and who maintained decades of cold peace with our occupiers.
We know that the al-Assad family – like other regional tyrants – has used the Palestinian cause as a source of national and regional legitimacy while seeking to control and even repress the Palestinian liberation campaign.
The truth about the Yarmouk camp bears witness to this bitter reality. What was once the vibrant heart of Palestinian life in Syria – a place where refugees rebuilt some semblance of homes stolen from them – has become a death trap. When Syrians rose up to demand freedom in 2011, regime forces laid siege to the camp, bombing and starving Palestinian refugees alongside the Syrians. Thousands of people were killed, detained and disappeared in prisons. More than 100,000 Palestinians were forced to flee, twice becoming refugees. This was the true face of al-Assad’s “support” for Palestine.
Now that its prisons are open, we are learning darker truths. More than 3,000 Palestinians have forcibly disappeared into Syrian prisons since 2011; only 630 of them survived and were released in the last two weeks. Among the survivors is Sabri Daraghma from the West Bank village of al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, who was a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He disappeared in 1982 and spent the next 42 years in prison in Syria.
For 50 years, the Al-Assad regime maintained its discreet accommodation of Israel through the 1974 disengagement agreement, even as Israeli planes violated Syrian airspace with impunity and the Israeli army maintained its occupation of the Golan. The leaders in Damascus have offered only empty rhetoric about the need to react at the right moment – a moment that never came.
Some say the Palestinians “owe” their support to al-Assad. But we do not “owe” anyone to support our fight against a common enemy. Palestinians are fighting against a colonial force that is pursuing a plan for “Greater Israel” that extends well beyond the borders of historic Palestine and into neighboring Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.
Those of us truly guided by the Palestinian cause cannot separate our struggle for justice from the broader liberation of all people. The love that comes from an unwavering commitment to a just cause has sustained our resistance through eight decades of displacement and betrayal – not alliances with oppressors, not the support of dictators, but the unwavering will of a people who refuse to accept enslavement.
This spirit is perhaps why the Palestinian flag is raised whenever Arabs rally for freedom, a symbol of our collective aspiration for justice. During the Arab Spring, Palestine found itself at the heart of the protests – not only as a cause, but as an example of unbreakable resistance. It is no coincidence that those who sought to crush these revolutionary dreams worked so desperately to sever this connection.
It has been 13 years since the Syrian people took to the streets to demand freedom. They endured barrel bombs, chemical attacks, torture chambers, enforced disappearances and the world’s indifference. Yet they persisted. Today, as they return home, they walk the streets not as refugees but as Syrians. Those who insult people who won freedom with their own hands should be ashamed.
Of course, there are many reasons to criticize the forces involved in the fall of Al-Assad. We have no illusions. The armed opposition groups that now control Syria are in collusion with imperial forces. Some of them received funding from the United States, others were supported by Israel; still others participated in the oppression of the Syrians themselves.
Since the fall of Al-Assad, Israel has launched a massive aerial bombardment campaign against military and civilian infrastructure targets across the country and has advanced further into Syrian territory. There has been virtually no response from the new government in Damascus. Some celebrated this by saying that the Syrians had “got what they deserved” by toppling al-Assad. Others wonder why Israel bombed the military capabilities of an expected “ally.”
Perhaps it is because the Syrian victory awakened hope in a generation that had been crushed and subjugated. There is a real possibility that the millions of newly liberated Syrians will claim this liberation for themselves, and that they will not abandon the revolutionary principles they have defended for decades.
For us Palestinians, the images of Syrians returning home awakened something deep in our collective consciousness: the possibility of return, of reconnected roads, of borders erased by the simple act of returning home on foot. Even in Gaza, where people lived through 14 months of genocide that cost so many lives, destroyed thousands of years of history and wiped out entire cities, the news from Syria resonated.
The Palestinian cause endures because it is just, because it is just and because we carry within us something that cannot be defeated: a collective memory that resists erasure. Israel remains what it has always been: a colonial settlement project that we Arabs will continue to resist.
From the refugee camps of Lebanon to the besieged streets of Gaza, from the divided hills of Jerusalem to the diaspora scattered across the world, we Palestinians remain unyielding, unbroken and unmoved by anything except our inalienable right to freedom. The fall of a dictator does not weaken what he never had to strengthen. Our cause is carried in the hearts of millions of people who know that true liberation elevates everyone and chains no one.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
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