U.S.-backed Syrian government is rebranded Al-Qaeda, kicks out Palestinian groups

Earlier this year, the new government of Syria – now under the rule of a rebranded Al-Qaeda sect known as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham – announced that it would expel all individuals affiliated with Palestinian resistance organizations. 

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and his government specifically targeted the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Both of these organizations have active resistance fighters inside Gaza. More broadly, these organizations have played a crucial role in organizing international outcry against the U.S.-Israel genocide. 

Nonetheless, President al-Sharaa and HTS have made it clear that, well, they just don’t care. Since taking power in January of this year, the HTS government has taken extreme and rapid steps to attack Axis of Resistance institutions in Syria. Previously, the Syrian Arab Republic served as a sanctuary for anti-Zionist Palestinian political groups. 

These new anti-Palestine policies are already taking hold. As of Aug. 25, the Egyptian government confirmed that it had approved resident visas for Ziad Nakhaleh, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Jamil Mazhar, Deputy Secretary-General of the PFLP. 

Naji is 79 years old and has lived in Syria since the Nakba forced his family to flee Bethlehem in 1948, 77 years ago. He now has to move across a gulf to a different country, even farther from his ancestral home. 

The U.S. wants the world to believe that the end of the Assad government in Syria means a new era of democracy and freedom. Where is the democracy in undermining people who would organize against genocide? Where is the freedom in expelling liberation fighters who have spent most of their lives in Syria? 

Once again, this new Syrian “democracy” demonstrates that it isn’t a democracy at all, but a proxy dictatorship for Western imperialists who want Palestine and the entire Axis of Resistance completely isolated.