.png)
A group of Palestinian and Syrian youths issued a call to gather and demonstrate peacefully in front of the Palestinian Embassy in Syria on Thursday, January 9, 2025, at noon. The call coincided with the arrival of a Palestinian Authority (PA) delegation to Syria to meet with members of the new Syrian administration. This delegation included controversial figures such as the son of PA President Yasser Abbas, as well as other senior Fatah officials who have been accused of corruption.
In the invitation to the rally, organizers called for a protest against the PA and its representatives in Syria over the ongoing siege of the Jenin refugee camp, the PA's silence on the genocide of Gaza, and the PA's complicity with the Assad regime and pro-Assad factions during the siege of Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, 70 to 80 percent of which was destroyed during the Syrian war. Organizers stressed that this delegation, which claims to represent Palestinians in Syria, has no popular legitimacy and that Syrian Palestinians were not consulted over the appointment of this delegation.
When I arrived at the Embassy at around noon to cover the demonstration, I was surprised to see a crowd of about 200 people gathered, waving pictures of PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah emblems and chanting in support of the PA.
Upon inquiry, it turned out that buses had been prepared to transport them from several other Palestinian camps in Damascus and its countryside, after they had been mobilized and incentivized to appear as supporters of the PA.
After some time, anti-PA protesters gradually began to arrive at the scene. Organizers and protesters were stunned by the scene before them. At 12:30 a.m., a protester was physically assaulted by a PA supporter when he tried to approach the embassy building to take pictures. Initially, Syrian police officers tried to calm the situation by separating the two sides. The anti-PA protesters, who numbered no more than 30 people, gathered on the other side of the road and debated whether or not to continue. When I tried to film these events, I was attacked by pro-PA supporters, and one of them hit me and knocked my device to the ground.
After that, agents in Syrian police uniforms, who were rumored to actually belong to the PA's security apparatus, intervened and attacked the dissenters. A number of protesters, including a Syrian photojournalist, were dragged to the side of the embassy building. When I tried to film these events, two of the aforementioned officers attacked me and dragged me to the other side and confiscated my cell phone, even though I repeatedly told them that I was a journalist and held a permit from the Syrian Ministry of Information that allowed me to film.
At about 1pm, the officers took me, under threat, to a small kiosk next to the embassy, where I was placed alongside all the other detainees, a total of 10 people, which included two journalists. The officers fired several times in the air to intimidate us, with one officer actually forgetting to secure his weapon, which then fired accidentally with the bullet landing right next to me.
We were held in the booth under the officers' guard until the two gatherings were completely dispersed. The officers then asked us to present identification documents, and we did so, except for one of the arrested youths who had left his ID card in his car. Two officers accompanied him to the parking lot to get his ID card, and one of them beat him up on the way back. After the square was cleared of the crowds, the officers, who had confiscated our cell phones and ID cards, ordered us to accompany them to the Interior Ministry building in the Kafr Sousa area of Damascus. When we arrived at the ministry building, we asked the General Security officer what was going to happen to us, and he assured us that there would be a 10 minute routine procedure to verify our identities before we were released.
After about an hour and a half of waiting inside the Interior Ministry building, the police officers ordered us to leave the building and get into a Syrian police car. Nine of us got into the car along with three armed officers, while the 10th detainee got into his own car that he had brought to the ministry, accompanied by the public security officer.
After 20 minutes, we arrived at the police command center on Khaled bin al-Walid Street in Damascus, where each of us retrieved our IDs and devices. I was then asked to delete all the photos and videos I had taken of the rally, including a video documenting the assault against me at the hands of PA men and Syrian police officers. At first, I refused and showed them the press permit that I had obtained on Wednesday, January 8, from the Syrian Ministry of Information. But the officer replied that he did not acknowledge the validity of the permit, even after I showed him the conversation between me and Mr. Mustafa Kattab, the member of the Syrian Ministry of Information in charge of issuing permits to journalists working in Syria. After I still refused to delete the content, the officers confiscated my device by force. At this point, some of my fellow detainees spoke up and advised me to cooperate, so I agreed to delete the footage. It was only then that we were allowed to leave the police headquarters, the time being 4:10 p.m., more than three hours after we had initially been detained.
