Palestinian Resistance Groups Leave Syria Under Pressure from HTS Regime: Report

Saturday, 24 May 2025 12:14 AM

File photo shows Palestinian flags hanging from windows at the Yarmouk Refugee Camp near the Syrian capital Damascus. (Photo by AFP)

Various senior Palestinian resistance officials have reportedly left Syria and their groups disarmed after mounting pressure from the new authorities in the Arab country, who have forged close ties with the US and are said to be seeking relations with the Israeli regime.

The groups used to enjoy close relations with the government of Syria’s former democratically-elected president Bashar al-Assad that was overthrown late last year following raging violence across the country by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group.

A report provided by AFP on Friday, however, showed that the new regime that was set up by the HTS after the takeover, has been taking a raft of escalatory measures against the groups.

One resistance official cited by the report said many Syria-based Palestinian groups had been forced to hand over their weapons, and even demanded, in some cases, to provide lists of members, who possessed individual arms.

The HTS-led regime has also reportedly been preventing the groups’ operation in Syria and arresting their senior officials.

According to a resistance official, the new authorities have also seized property from "private homes, offices, vehicles, and military training camps in the Damascus countryside and other provinces" that used to belong to the groups.

‘Resistance stronghold shaken up near Damascus’

The Yarmouk Refugee Camp, located eight kilometers (four miles) near Damascus, that used to serve as a stronghold for Palestinian resistance, has also reportedly witnessed dramatic unwelcome transformation.

Resistance banners have been removed from the camp, and party buildings have been shut down and stripped of armed protection, the AFP report noted.

Similarly, other factional premises across Damascus appeared to be deserted, it added.

Pressure from the United States

The developments followed overwhelming pressure from the United States, which has branded Palestinian resistance as “terrorism,” and has long demanded that issues related to "terrorism" be addressed in the Arab country.

The US, which never succeeded to force its demands on Assad’s government, has also been trying to pressure Damascus into not letting Syria’s soil be used as a launch pad for resistance groups’ operations against the Israeli regime, Washington’s most important regional ally.

Washington had, meanwhile, conditioned lifting its sanctions on Syria on the country’s eliminating resistance groups among other things.

US President Donald Trump announced removal of all the coercive measures on May 13.

The US president says he will lift all of Washington’s sanctions against Syria after the new administration in the Arab country reportedly proposed making “peace” with the Israeli regime.

Later, he met with the HTS-led regime’s head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani in the Saudi capital Riyadh, reportedly presenting him with a list of demands.

This is while, for decades, Syria had been hosting Palestinian factions, especially after many Palestinians fled to the Arab country in 1948. The mass exodus took place following the Israeli regime’s claiming existence in the region after a heavily-Western-backed war against regional territories.

The pro-Palestinian stance, however, reportedly did not sit well with the HTS-led regime, whose chief al-Jolani is also believed to have proposed starting relations with the Israeli regime.

The head of the HTS-led administration in Syria has offered to build Trump Tower in Damascus, reach peace with Israel and provide US with access to Syria.

Observers, meanwhile, note that the far-and-wide onslaught leading to Syria’s takeover by the HTS, which used to be the Takfiri terrorist group of al-Qaeda’s former branch in Syria, came amid intense Israeli attacks on the Arab country’s vital infrastructures.