Palestinian freedom cannot rest on the oppression of others

When injured Yahya Sinwar hurled a stick at the Zionist war machine, resisting even in the last moments of his life, he embodied the unbreakable Palestinian cause for liberation. For 75 years of relentless brutality, we Palestinians have remained steadfast in our pursuit to see freedom on our land.

Our resistance endures because it is driven by a profound truth: that the struggle for Palestinian liberation is inseparable from the universal fight for human dignity. It is this commitment to collective freedom, rather than narrow national interests, that has both sustained Palestinian resistance and ignited a growing tide 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 full of complex emotions: grief for those who have been lost, hope for what might be possible, and an unwavering commitment to our own liberation.

Some now claim that Palestine’s cause is weakened by the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, that our struggle for liberation somehow relied on his iron grip over 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 who oppress their own people. Our resistance has never needed those who murdered Palestinian refugees, who imprisoned our fighters, and who maintained decades of cold peace with our occupiers.

We know the al-Assad family – like other regional tyrants – used the Palestinian cause as a source of national and regional legitimacy while seeking to control and even suppress the Palestinian liberation drive.

The truth of the Yarmouk camp stands as a testament to this bitter reality. What was once the vibrant heart of Palestinian life in Syria – a place where refugees rebuilt some semblance of the homes stolen from them – became a death trap. When Syrians rose up demanding freedom in 2011, regime forces laid siege to the camp, bombing and starving Palestinian refugees alongside Syrians. Thousands were killed, detained, and disappeared into prisons. More than 100,000 Palestinians were forced to flee, becoming refugees twice over. This was the true face of al-Assad’s “support” for Palestine.

Now, as his prisons are opened, we learn more dark truths. More than 3,000 Palestinians had been forcibly disappeared into Syrian prisons since 2011; only 630 of them survived and were released over the past two weeks. Among the survivors is Sabri Daraghma from the West Bank village of al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, who used to be a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He disappeared in 1982 and spent the following 42 years imprisoned in Syria.

For 50 years, the al-Assad regime maintained its quiet accommodation of Israel through the 1974 disengagement agreement even as Israeli jets violated Syrian airspace with impunity and the Israeli army maintained its occupation of the Golan. The rulers in Damascus offered nothing but empty rhetoric about responding at the appropriate time – a time that never came.

Some say Palestinians “owe” the al-Assads for their support. But we do not “owe” anyone for supporting our struggle against a common enemy. Palestinians are fighting against a settler-colonial force pursuing a plan of “Greater Israel” that goes way beyond the borders of historic Palestine and into neighbouring Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

Those of us truly guided by the Palestinian cause cannot separate our struggle for justice from the wider liberation of all peoples. The love that emanates 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 unbreakable will of a people who refuse to accept subjugation.

This spirit, perhaps, is why the Palestinian flag is raised whenever Arabs gather for freedom as a symbol of our collective yearning for justice. During the Arab Spring, Palestine stood at the heart of protests – not just as a cause, but as an example of unbreakable resistance. It’s 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 demanding freedom. They endured barrel bombs, chemical attacks, torture chambers, forced disappearances, and the world’s indifference. Yet they persisted. Now, as they return home, they walk the streets not as refugees but as Syrians. Those who hurl insults at people who have gained freedom by their own hands should be ashamed.

Of course, there is plenty of reason to be critical of the forces involved in al-Assad’s fall. We harbour no illusions. The opposition armed groups that now control Syria have colluded with imperial forces. Some of them have received funding from the United States, others have been supported by Israel; others still have been involved in oppressing Syrians themselves.

Since al-Assad’s fall, Israel has launched a massive air bombardment campaign against military and civilian infrastructure targets across the country and advanced further into Syrian territory. There has been largely no response from the new government in Damascus. Some have celebrated this as Syrians “getting what they deserved” for toppling al-Assad. Others have wondered why Israel has bombed the military capabilities of an expected “ally”.

Perhaps it is because Syrian victory has awakened hope in a generation that had been crushed into submission. There is a real possibility that the millions of newly freed Syrians will claim this liberation for themselves, that they will not abandon the revolutionary principles they’ve had for decades.

For us, Palestinians, the images of Syrians returning home have stirred something deep in our collective consciousness – the possibility of a return, of roads reconnected, of borders erased by the simple act of people walking home. Even in Gaza, where people have experienced 14 months of genocide that has claimed so many lives, destroyed thousands of years of history, and annihilated whole towns, the news of Syria has reverberated.

The Palestinian cause endures because it is just, because it is right, and because we carry within us something that cannot be defeated: a collective memory that withstands erasure. Israel remains what it has always been: a settler colonial 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 globe, we Palestinians remain unbowed, unbroken, and unbeholden to anything but our inalienable right to freedom. The fall of a dictator does not weaken what was never his to strengthen. Our cause is carried in the hearts of millions who know that true liberation lifts all and chains none.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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