On Saturday, Bashar al-Assad, the pinnacle of the Syrian regime, gave a speech on the Arab-Islamic summit in Saudi Arabia. His name for an finish to the struggle on Gaza sparked anger amongst activists in northwest Syria, who noticed the denunciation of Israel as hypocritical.
Al-Assad criticised the “vicious circle” of permitting Israel to commit massacres then being content material with offering humanitarian support as an alternative of safety for the Palestinian individuals.
“A right cannot be restored when the criminal has become a judge and the thief has become a referee,” he stated, referring to the position of Western nations within the Israeli bombing marketing campaign of Gaza.
For the reason that begin of the Israel-Hamas battle on October 7, Syrian activists have used the phrase “two sides of the same coin” to explain each the Syrian regime and Israel’s crimes in opposition to the Syrian and Palestinian peoples. They think about al-Assad’s accusations of crimes and impunity to additionally describe what he has executed in Syria over the previous 12 years.
Bombing below the radar
Munira Baloch, a 34-year-old journalist, stated she believes that Assad was in a position to stay on the head of his regime regardless of his crimes as a result of he obtained the “green light” to do what he needed in opposition to the Syrian individuals.
She informed Al Jazeera that the regime’s sample of utilizing flimsy pretexts to justify bombing and crimes, which the world condones, continues to this present day.
Throughout October, Gaza wasn’t the one space being bombed. Quite, Idlib witnessed probably the most intense army escalation in three years. A whole bunch of websites, together with civilian ones, had been focused by aerial and artillery assaults, leaving dozens of individuals killed and wounded, and inflicting a brand new wave of displacement.
“The policy is the same in both countries of using intense bombing to displace opponents,” stated Baloch. She lived in Rankous within the Damascus countryside earlier than being compelled into repeated displacement then settling in Idlib six years in the past. “We [Gaza and northwestern Syria] are both densely populated areas under siege and continuous bombing.”
Baloch nonetheless remembers the months she endured a siege by regime forces whereas residing with six households in a two-room home with no electrical energy, water, or heating: “We ran out of bread crumbs until we accepted the displacement agreement to Idlib,” she stated.
Political hypocrisy
Throughout the previous few weeks, there have been many scenes of Palestinians being displaced, on foot, from northern Gaza to the south.
That introduced again painful reminiscences for Ali al-Dalati, who was displaced along with his household, in the hunt for security, about six years in the past. In January 2017, the 26-year-old activist and his household walked eight kilometres (5 miles) from the village of Bassemah – which was being bombed by regime forces with chemical weapons, incendiary phosphorus, and napalm – to the village of Deir Kanon within the Damascus countryside.
“I can’t forget,” he informed Al Jazeera, in regards to the scene of individuals gathering collectively to achieve the protected zone, which “seemed like the Day of Judgment”.
Throughout their displacement, these alongside him had been focused by snipers, just like the Palestinians being focused by Israel. Al-Dalati recalled that whoever was strolling in direction of the protected zone couldn’t method any of the useless on the street. “My neighbour who came with us was killed, and then her son was killed because he tried to drag her body to bury it,” he stated.
Al-Dalati, who arrived in Idlib on January 31, 2017, considered the invites of al-Assad, who he described as a “war criminal,” and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, whose forces occupy 4 Arab nations (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen), to the summit as hypocritical and demonstrating an absence of precise intention to offer help to Palestinians.
Al-Dalati stated he believes the present “popularity” of the Palestinian trigger and the rising variety of deaths is what fuels worldwide curiosity, including that condemning one crime and never the opposite just isn’t acceptable.
Identical killers
Talal al-Loush, a 61-year-old activist who was displaced from Homs to Idlib 9 years in the past, informed Al Jazeera that he couldn’t take heed to Bashar al-Assad’s total speech as a result of he felt “nauseous”. He was astonished that the person chargeable for the killing and arresting of tons of of hundreds and the displacement of tens of millions would communicate on behalf of Gaza.
“The killers are the same, but the one that pulls the trigger is different,” al-Loush stated, recalling the crimes he witnessed in Homs between 2012 and 2013, when regime forces and allied Iranian and Shiite militias dedicated horrific massacres and compelled civilians into displacement, just like Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Al-Loush believes that Israel’s army superiority has enabled it to commit crimes inside a shorter interval than what was required by the Syrian regime. “The videos that show the extent of destruction and killing in Gaza are the same scenes we saw in Homs 10 years ago,” he stated.
Torture within the title of Palestine
The crimes of the Syrian regime affected Palestinians and Syrians alike, in keeping with Muhammad Taha, a 25-year-old Palestinian who lived by the two-year siege within the Yarmouk Camp neighbourhood, south of Damascus. There, dozens died of starvation.
Taha, who was born in Damascus and now lives in Idlib after being displaced, believes that the Syrian regime and the leaders of the nations surrounding Palestine are mere shields for Israel. He stated he was not shocked by the similarities of the crimes dedicated in opposition to civilians by the Syrian regime and Israel’s assaults on Gaza, such because the bombing of civilians, hospitals, mosques, church buildings, civil defence groups, and ambulances.
Standing with the Palestinians is a false declare by the Syrian regime, Taha stated. He factors to the “Palestine Branch”, the infamous army intelligence division in Damascus identified for its brutal torture of detainees, as proof. “No Palestinian family in Syria was spared” having not less than one in all its members being detained on the facility, he stated.