As thousands filled the streets to celebrate liberation, others were reeling from Israel’s latest raid and fearing for their safety amid sectarian tensions.
By Santiago Montag*
December 23, 2025
For many Syrians, when rebel leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa launched a nationwide offensive in November 2024 that would lead to the overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime — a system of repression that had shaped their lives for decades — it marked the beginning of a long-awaited future. For others, it has ushered in a period of deep uncertainty defined by unchecked sectarian violence and the absence of a clear political horizon, and for the inhabitants of southern Syria, a violent Israeli military occupation.
The northern city of Aleppo was the first to fall to the forces of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) during its “Operation Deterrence of Aggression.” Over the next 12 days, the rebels swept south at a staggering pace, capturing Hama, Homs, and ultimately Damascus from the Syrian National Army. Last month, cities along that same route celebrated the first anniversary of the revolution that brought an end to a brutal 14-year civil war.
In the capital, neighborhoods that had borne the brunt of the fighting began marking the anniversary days before the official date of liberation — Dec. 8, 2024 — when the Assad family fled to Moscow. On Dec. 7, Abu Qassem, a 25-year-old member of the government’s General Security Forces who entered Damascus with HTS during the 2024 offensive, stood guard over the celebrations from the rooftop of a ruined building. Holding his rifle, he reflected on the moment: “Now we are truly free. A year ago, we were oppressed — we couldn’t live.”
Festivities in central Damascus began at dawn on Dec. 8 with the first prayer at the Grand Umayyad Mosque in the Old City. Among the worshippers was Al-Sharaa, now Syria’s president, who later delivered a nationally televised address calling for unity. Since taking power, the Al-Sharaa government has sought to reintegrate Syria into the international arena while navigating the country’s ethnic and cultural diversity, and, at the same time, to rehabilitate its image given Al-Sharaa’s past links to Al-Qaeda.
By midmorning, a military parade had moved down Mezzeh Highway into the capital and past the Defense Ministry. Its facade was still draped in green tarps concealing the damage from four Israeli airstrikes carried out in July, which left much of the building in ruins.
Seated in an antique shop near Grand Mosque Park, Fahed, a 46-year-old civil engineer, watched crowds march past waving the new Syrian flag. “We are undoubtedly living in a new era,” he said, dipping his bread in oil and za’atar. “We earned the right to be critical without being arrested. People can finally speak freely.” Still, he affirmed, the country faces immense challenges. “On the international front, many achievements have been made, but at home we are still struggling with daily survival.”
For decades, Syrians have endured economic isolation under U.S. and European sanctions on the Assad regime, a policy that compounded the devastation of the civil war. The result is grim: Millions face food insecurity, while much of the country’s infrastructure remains destroyed. Though some progress has been made — including the rollback of certain sanctions and promises of major investments, primarily from Gulf states — the economy remains fragile. The World Bank has estimated that over $200 billion will be required to rebuild the country.
“The economic conditions that led to the 2011 uprising are repeating themselves,” said Abu Mohamad, a survey researcher studying the roots of the 2011 revolt, who requested a pseudonym. “We keep hearing the same thing: ‘Don’t ask me about what happened more than 10 years ago. Ask me about now — now I have no electricity, no food, no water.’”
In the heart of Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp on the southern edge of Damascus whose residents are among the poorest Syrians, crowds gathered for the anniversary celebrations at Palestine Hospital, once a hub of civil resistance during the war. A scout orchestra played military marches and the national anthems of Palestine and Syria as people sang and waved the flags of both nations.
Khaldoun Al-Mallah, a 40-year-old Palestinian surgeon who worked at the hospital throughout the six-year siege, spoke with a mixture of relief and restraint. “We have lifted a huge weight off our shoulders — but now we face others,” he remarked.
“I will never forget the friends I lost in the war,” he added, gazing at the wall of a ruined building nearby, which was decorated with a timeline of Yarmouk’s history throughout the war alongside photographs of hundreds of those killed or disappeared. “But today is a day of celebration. Nothing can overshadow it.” Greeting his colleagues with four kisses on the cheek, he joined the march down the camp’s central avenue, before boarding buses bound for Umayyad Square, where the main commemoration was underway.
‘Israel invents reasons to occupy Beit Jinn’
While Syrians further north marked the anniversary in celebration, residents of Beit Jinn, a Sunni-majority village on the foothills of Mount Hermon/Jabal A-Shaykh near the Israeli border, were burying 13 members of their community killed by Israeli forces during a raid.
In the early hours of Nov. 28, Israeli army jeeps entered Beit Jinn to arrest two men accused of belonging to Jama’a Islamiya, a Lebanese Sunni Islamist group Israel says fired rockets from Lebanon. Residents deny the accusations. “They were ordinary people — farmers, shepherds — with no connection to any armed group,” said Abu Ahmad, a 49-year-old shopkeeper who was shot in the shoulder during the raid. “Israel invents reasons to occupy Beit Jinn. The goal is to expand control over Jabal A-Shaykh and the southern region.”
Since early 2025, the buffer zone between Syria and Israel established after the 1973 war has been repeatedly altered, more frequently than at any point in the past five decades. Through various military and administrative measures, Israel has effectively taken control of several towns along the border, from the Golan Heights to the frontier with Jordan, in a widening military occupation that shows no sign of reversing.
According to residents of Beit Jinn, soldiers stormed homes while families slept, ransacking property and terrifying the population. They were met with armed resistance, and for more than two hours, gunfire echoed through the village’s narrow, mountainside streets. Locals estimate that more than 100 Israeli soldiers took part in the operation. As the fighting escalated, Israeli forces deployed a helicopter and carried out airstrikes on residential homes.
“We resisted with a pistol and even a wooden stick; it is our right to defend our land,” said Salim Ahmad Hassan, whose son was killed while trying to protect their home. “We had martyrs, but we won.” In addition to the 13 killed, the assault left several others wounded, including Azaa, a 9-year-old girl recovering from a gunshot wound to the hip, and her father, Ahmad Faisal, who was shot in the arm.
“This was not the first invasion,” Hassan noted. “Six months ago, they entered the village, arrested seven people, and killed an unarmed young man.” He said residents had tried to raise the issue with the United Nations, without success. “The prisoners are still in Israel,” he added, expressing frustration with UNDOF, the UN force monitoring the border since 1974.
“People from neighboring villages came — Christians and Druze — to offer condolences and share our pain,” said 60-year-old resident Abdo Qassem Hamada, as he walked through the wreckage of his son’s bombed home, strewn with toys, twisted metal, and shattered concrete. Hamada’s daughter-in-law and two grandchildren were killed in the strike; only his 9-year-old grandson, Ali, survived. “Israel is uncontrollable. I no longer have hope,” he added, hugging the boy.
Exacerbating sectarian tensions
In southern Syria and several other regions of the country, the power vacuum that followed the end of the civil war has reinforced local and tribal loyalties, while the state has lacked the capacity to pursue transitional justice for the countless massacres and human rights violations perpetrated during the 14-year conflict. In this volatile environment, vigilante violence has proliferated, and entire religious and ethnic minority communities, including Alawites and Druze, have been subjected to collective and often unfounded accusations of disloyalty.
Israel, for its part, seized on this upheaval to advance its strategic interests, initially by portraying Syria’s transitional government under Al-Sharaa as a military threat. As Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian political economist, explained to +972, such claims ring hollow given Israel’s “overwhelming technological and military superiority, and its support from the United States.”
Over time, Israel deepened its involvement through actions that further destabilized the country and exacerbated sectarian tensions. In May, the Israeli army bombed Syrian government forces and areas near the presidential palace, ostensibly to protect the Druze communities of Jaramana and Sahnaya. Two months later, when clashes erupted between armed Bedouin tribes and Druze factions led by Hikmat Al-Hijri — a Druze cleric in Suwayda and vocal opponent of Al-Sharaa — Israel again intervened, launching direct attacks on transitional government forces under the same pretext.
Until then, the followers of Al-Hijri, who has since developed ties with Israel, were not widely regarded as a legitimate armed force. But the intervention of Al-Sharaa’s General Security units in the July clashes, which resulted in the massacre of Druze civilians, combined with Israel’s military presence in the region, has bolstered Al-Hijri’s standing; in August, Suwayda’s Druze military factions united to form the National Guard, a new militia affiliated with Al-Hijri.
For its part, Israel launched repeated airstrikes on Syrian government forces in and around Suwayda in July — once again citing the protection of the Druze — which culminated in the bombing of the Defense Ministry in Damascus on July 16. Later that day, Al-Sharaa began withdrawing his forces from Suwayda, while some 50,000 Bedouin fighters had mobilized to fight what they described as “Israeli-backed Al-Hijri militias.” The violence that followed devastated the local community: upward of 2,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.
“Israel is instrumentalizing these sectarian tensions to extract concessions inside Syria,” Daher said. “The southern territories should also be seen as part of a U.S.-Israeli hegemony in the region — a kind of buffer zone, like in southern Lebanon, that can be used at various points to supposedly protect borders.”
Although Suwayda is still reeling from the clashes, with humanitarian access severely restricted, residents still took to the streets this month to celebrate the anniversary of Assad’s overthrow. At the same time, protests have increasingly featured Israeli flags — an unprecedented phenomenon in Syria. While far from representative of the population as a whole, the imagery reflects mounting frustration. “People have been abandoned,” Daher explained. “No one is caring for or defending them in the south.”
U.S. President Donald Trump has reportedly urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to limit interference in Syria in order to preserve diplomatic channels with Al-Sharaa’s government. Yet despite periodic expressions of optimism following talks, developments on the ground suggest otherwise: the establishment of new bases, tightened control, and Netanyahu’s highly symbolic visit to Israeli troops stationed inside Syrian territory, a move that drew condemnation from the UN.
Meanwhile, Syria’s transitional government remains constrained, attempting to comply with U.S. demands for integration into the global market while seeking the aid required to rebuild the country. “The government’s strategy is clear,” Daher said. “It aims to reach a security agreement based on the 1974 disengagement framework, which could eventually lead to a form of normalization with Israel.”
For now, he added, the priority is restoring the pre-Dec. 8 border lines — a process likely tied to sanctions relief and future concessions involving the United States, Israel, and Syria.
The majority of names in this article have been modified to protect the identities of the individuals.
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