Flight of pro-Assad factions comes amid Trump’s demand that new regime crack down on Palestinian terrorism as a condition for sanctions relief
Leaders of Iran-backed Palestinian terror groups in Syria close to former president Bashar al-Assad have left the country under pressure from the regime of Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who led the ouster of the Iran-backed strongman in December, Palestinian sources said Friday.
The armed factions’ flight comes amid a White House demand that Sharaa crack down on Palestinian terror groups as a condition for the removal of Washington’s sanctions on Damascus. There have also been unconfirmed reports that Syria’s new regime has held indirect talks with Israel on potential normalization between the two countries, despite Israeli leaders’ deep suspicion of Sharaa due to his jihadi past.
The crackdown did not appear to affect the Syrian presence of Gaza-based Hamas, which is also backed by Iran, nor that of Fatah, the secularist faction that dominates the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
The leader of one Iran-backed Palestinian group, who left Syria after Assad’s overthrow, said on condition of anonymity that “most of the Palestinian factional leadership that received support from Tehran has left Damascus” to countries including Lebanon. Another faction leader still in Damascus confirmed the development.
The first faction leader said “the factions have fully handed over weapons in their headquarters or with their cadres” to the authorities, who also received “lists of names of faction members possessing individual weapons” and demanded that those arms be handed over.
A third Palestinian faction source in Damascus said that after Assad’s overthrow, “we gathered our members’ weapons ourselves and handed them over, but we have kept individual light weapons for protection… with the [authorities’] authorization.”
In Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in the Damascus suburbs that was devastated during Syria’s civil war, factional banners usually displayed at the entrance were gone and party buildings were closed and unguarded, AFP photographers said. Factional premises elsewhere in Damascus also appeared closed.
Many Palestinians fled to Syria in 1948 following the creation of Israel, and from the mid-1960s Syria began hosting the leadership of armed Palestinian factions. Iran-backed Palestinian groups enjoyed considerable freedom of movement under Assad.
Washington, which designates some of the factions as terrorist organizations, last week announced it was lifting sanctions on Syria. The White House had earlier said the new Syrian regime would have to comply with demands, including suppressing terrorism and preventing “Iran and its proxies from exploiting Syrian territory.”
According to the White House, during a meeting in Saudi Arabia last week, US President Donald Trump gave Sharaa a list of demands that included deporting “Palestinian terrorists.”
The Iran-backed Palestinian factions in Syria, along with other terror groups from Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, are part of Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, which is openly committed to Israel’s destruction. Some Axis members fought alongside Assad’s forces when civil war erupted in Syria in 2011.
In neighboring Lebanon, a government official told AFP that the disarmament of Palestinian camps, where factions usually handle security, would begin next month based on an accord with visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also met with Sharaa in Damascus last month.
‘Unwelcome’
The Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Syria “did not receive any official request from the authorities to leave Syrian territory” but instead faced restrictions, the first faction leader told AFP.
Some factions “were de facto prohibited from operating,” or their members were arrested, he said, adding that the new authorities have seized property from “private homes, offices, vehicles and military training camps in the Damascus countryside and other provinces.”
Syrian authorities did not immediately provide a comment to AFP when asked about the matter.
Earlier this month, officials from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) said Syrian authorities briefly detained factional chief Talal Naji.
In April, Islamic Jihad said Syrian official Khaled Khaled and organizing committee member Yasser al-Zafri had been detained “without explanation.” A source from the group told AFP on Friday that they were still detained.
The second Palestinian faction leader, from a group that has remained in Damascus with limited representation, said there was “no cooperation between most of the Palestinian factions and the new Syrian administration.”
“The response to our contact is mostly cold or delayed. We feel like unwelcome guests, though they don’t say that clearly,” he added, also requesting anonymity.
A Hamas official in Gaza told AFP that it had “channels of communication with our brothers in Syria.”
Hamas has minimal representation in Syria, having left the country after the civil war there began. Hamas’s ties with the Assad regime had deteriorated amid the terror group’s support for opposition demands.
Yarmouk camp resident Marwan Mnawar, a retiree, said that “nobody knows what happened to the factional leadership,” adding that “people just want to live, they are exhausted” by the conflict and factional infighting.
Content retrieved from: https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-backed-palestinian-terror-groups-said-to-leave-syria-under-pressure-from-sharaa/.
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