On 8 December 2024, after more than five decades in power, the Assad regime in Syria was overthrown. Syrians, at home and abroad, erupted into celebrations and were joined by people across the region, including many Palestinians.
Despite cultivating a pro-Palestinian image with supportive rhetoric, the Syrian Baath regime oppressed Palestinians inside the country - alongside most of the population - while working to curtail independent Palestinian efforts abroad.
From his seizure of power in 1970 until his death in 2000, Hafez al-Assad’s relations with Palestinians were characterised by suspicion, attempts to infiltrate their national movement, and deadly military actions against them.
This continued under his son and successor Bashar al-Assad who bombed and besieged Yarmouk - Syria’s largest Palestinian refugee camp - from 2012 onwards. By April 2018, rights groups estimated that over 60% of that camp had been destroyed.
The ‘Yusuf Urabi affair’
From 1964-1966 there was cooperation between Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement and the Syrian Baath . Mainly to embarrass Egypt, Syria allowed the fedayeen (Palestinian guerrillas) to establish training camps and store arms and supplies. It facilitated fedayeen raids from Lebanon and Jordan, but with limitations. They did not enjoy free rein, being largely denied access to strike into Israel from Syria’s Golan.
The major confrontation came on 5 May 1966, when Yusef Urabi, a Palestinian officer in the Syrian army and member of Fatah's armed wing (Al-Asifah), was killed in Yarmouk Camp during an attempt to de-escalate tensions between Arafat and the pro-Baathist Ahmed Jibril .
Citing Fatah’s internal files, Palestinian scholar Hanna Batatu describes how Arafat and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) both believed the Baath leadership had orchestrated the whole incident to gain control of Fatah’s military. Following the killing, Hafez al-Assad - then Syrian Defence Minister - personally ordered the arrests of all senior Fatah commanders in Damascus, including Arafat and Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) .
Following pressure, Fatah’s leaders were released on condition that they leave Syria. However, Abd al-Majid Zaghmout remained imprisoned for 34 years, until his death. Abu Iyad later recounted Assad’s hostility during their meeting, being “struck by his intense hatred” for Arafat.
Syrian-Palestinian writer Nidal Betare argues that these arrests “almost destroyed the Fatah movement” with hatred between Assad and Arafat mutually felt thereafter, as this incident “may have set the scene for the turbulent relationship between Syria and the Palestinians.”
Empty rhetoric and infiltration
The Assad regime was one of several which rhetorically supported Palestine but was brutal in its treatment of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) , which already faced relentless Israeli assassination campaigns . However, there was an important distinction between them. Syria wanted to “bend the PLO to their will,” not destroy it or extinguish the Palestinian cause. Israel, by contrast, was determined to eliminate Palestinian nationalism completely.
After 1969, the now Fatah-dominated PLO had within and around it many different factions, some backed by Arab regimes. For decades, Assad attempted to dominate the resurgent Palestinian movement , including through proxy groups. The two main groups linked to Syria were As-Sa’iqa (‘the thunderbolt’) and Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC).
Egypt’s increased support to the PLO after 1967 , prompted Syria to invest more in these factions. In 1976, PLO member Shafiq al-Hout was nearly killed when As-Sa’iqa attacked a Lebanese newspaper he worked at. Afterwards, he saw Syrian minister Abdul Halim Khaddam who confirmed Damascus had ordered the ambush, but that he was not their intended target.
Despite these groups having limited support among Palestinians, the strategic realities of the PLO’s relations with Assad gave the pro-Syrian bloc a degree of leverage within the movement “out of all proportion to the popular support it could actually count on inside it.” As a result, these factions became “effective in creating a rift in Palestinian politics and weakening the PLO” according to Syrian scholar Yasser Munif.
Black September
Between 1970-71, King Hussein’s Western-backed Jordanian regime unleashed its forces against the Palestinians - events known as Black September . Over 3,000 people, mostly Palestinians, were killed and the PLO was expelled from Jordan.
Syria’s response was instructive. Salah Jadid, from the Baath Party’s left, sent tanks to aid the Palestinians, but Assad - now also commander of the air force - opposed it. Unable to stop the tanks, Assad prevented the air force from providing cover against Jordanian troops. Fearing a US-Israeli intervention, Syrian air support was halted and the Jordanian army held out until its own air force arrived and destroyed most of Syria’s tanks, forcing their withdrawal. Palestinians were then left to face the Hashemite regime alone.
First cleared out of Amman, they regrouped for a few months in the hills and wooded areas of Jerash and Ajloun in Jordan’s north. However, Hussein’s troops stormed these remaining positions using air and artillery fire. According to Batatu, following Assad’s complete seizure of power, he also prevented a large Palestinian force in southern Syria from assisting their comrades in these holdouts. Abandoned and outgunned, over 700 were then killed, while their fellow countrymen - blocked from aiding them - watched helplessly.
Despite initially breaking ties with Jordan after public anger, by autumn 1971 Assad moved towards reconciliation with Amman. When Jordan’s Prime Minister, Wasfi Tal, was assassinated in retaliation for Black September, Assad threatened the Palestinian leadership. He reportedly warned them: “Who touches King Hussein, touches me personally. I do not need the Syrian army to liquidate you. I can liquidate you by a speech on the radio or television!”
Following what many considered a golden era of Palestinian resurgence , Black September marked a devastating moment of defeat and victory for reactionary US/Israeli-aligned forces - one Assad had directly contributed to.
‘Breaking the back’ of the PLO
Following their expulsion from Jordan, the PLO regrouped in unstable, sectarian Lebanon, where Palestinians faced discrimination in the Maronite Christian-dominated country.
When the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975, the PLO initially tried to stay out, but this proved impossible. Instead, they joined the leftist-Muslim alliance - known as the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), headed by Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt . Together they fought the right-wing Christian coalition - the Lebanese Forces (LF).
Syria became a major player. Assad viewed Lebanon as strategically important, a key arena for his struggle with the PLO over leadership of the Arab front against Israel. After attempts to mediate politically failed, the situation worsened. Lebanon’s army split with its defectors throwing their support behind Jumblatt. Defying Assad, Jumblatt declared he would wage “total revolution” and, with the PLO, launched military offensives against Maronite forces.
Assad worried their victory could turn Lebanon into a “Cuba of the region” - i.e. uncontrolled escalations against Israel and the weakening of Syrian influence over Palestinians. The US and Israel also opposed a PLO-LNM victory, finding a confluence of interests with their purported enemy in Damascus.
In 1976, Syria launched a direct military assault against the PLO and its allies in Lebanon. For all Assad’s anti-imperialist rhetoric, the operation was greenlit by Washington. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called it a “strategic opportunity” to let Syria “break the back” of the PLO, as Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi details .
Syria’s intervention rescued the LF. It forced Palestinians to divert fighters, engaging them in pitched battles while Syrian troops shelled their refugee camps. Assad’s naval blockade also disrupted their fuel and weapons supplies. Lebanese scholar Fawwaz Traboulsi argues Kissinger “had every reason to be happy with the ‘astonishing reversal of fronts’ he had helped create”.
The Tal al-Za’atar massacre
Syria’s intervention not only thwarted a potential PLO-LNM victory but also assisted Israeli-backed Lebanese militias in committing one of the deadliest massacres in Palestinian history.
With Palestinian fighters diverted, LF forces seized their opportunity and went in for the kill. On 22 June 1976, they attacked remaining Palestinian and Muslim areas within Beirut’s Christian sector - both Jisr al-Basha (Palestinian) and Nabaa (Shiite) fell to the LF. Tal al-Za’atar was Lebanon’s largest and poorest Palestinian refugee camp. Most of its roughly 30,000 inhabitants were Nakba survivors, ethnically cleansed from Palestine in 1948 by Zionist militias. The camp had been under siege for months, but on 12th August 1976, it fell. Maronite militias overran it, targeting anyone they identified as Palestinian.
Estimates of those killed reach into the thousands. The militias left mutilated corpses of their victims throughout Tal al-Za’atar, before expelling its entire population. Some were slaughtered while fleeing, and others ‘disappeared’ at LF checkpoints.
Israel and Syria - two supposed enemies - provided covert support to the LF while it murdered Palestinians. In one revealing account, Arab League mediator Hassan Sabri al-Kholi reported seeing Israeli officers and two Syrian liaison personnel in an LF operations room while the massacre unfolded.
The ‘Battle of Tripoli’ and ‘War of the Camps’
From 1983 to 1987, Assad’s regime inflicted even more pain on Palestinian refugees while also preventing the PLO’s re-emergence as a force in Lebanon. Despite initially mending relations, Syria refused to provide the support it pledged before Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon . Assad declared “this war is not my war” and the PLO fought Israel alone before being evacuated to Tunisia, under a US-brokered agreement.
In 1983, Syria then helped sponsor an internal Fatah mutiny, with fighting breaking out in Lebanon (where Arafat secretly returned). During the ‘Battle of Tripoli’, Abu Jihad was interviewed, pointing out a Syrian tank as evidence of their involvement. Both Syrian and Israeli artillery battered Lebanon from land and sea.
Renowned Palestinian intellectual Edward Said published a scathing attack on Assad, declaring that, contrary to Syria’s pro-Palestinian rhetoric, “its true interest in Palestine is Syrian domination.”
After the Palestinian-Jordanian rapprochement in February 1985, Assad unleashed the Syrian-supported Amal militia and anti-Arafat forces in Lebanon against the Palestinian refugee camps. Dubbed the ‘War of the Camps’ , around 3,000 people were killed.
Most Palestinian groups united behind Arafat while Syria’s pro-Baathist front largely collapsed and Palestinians inside Syria staged demonstrations. Assad’s retaliation was swift, shuttering the Baathist factions’ offices while repressing the demonstrations.
Syria was condemned regionally with even Phalangists helping Palestinians return to Beirut. By contrast, the Israelis assisted Amal forces in 1986 by strafing Palestinians above Sidon. The fighting only ended after the outbreak of the First Intifada .
Syrian leverage over the PLO largely diminished during the 1990s and Assad’s death in 2000. However, one often overlooked motivation for Arafat’s disastrous decision to support Iraq’s 1991 invasion of Kuwait , was his belief that Saddam Hussein’s regime could be a counterweight to Assad’s. Alexander Bustos is a researcher and former assistant director at Palestine Deep Dive. He holds a master’s degree in Near and Middle Eastern studies from SOAS University of London. Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com Opinions expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect those of their employer, or of The New Arab and its editorial board or staff.