4/18/2025–|Last update: 4/18/202506:47 PM (Mecca time)
Syrian President Ahmed Al -Sharaa held talks with his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas In the Palace of the People BDamascus And that is in the first visit of Abbas to the Syrian capital in about 16 years.
The Syrian presidency said that the Sharia held a meeting with Abbas and the accompanying delegation, in the presence of Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al -Shaibani.
Abbas’s visit, his first to Damascus since June 2009, aims to discuss “the Syrian -Palestinian relations and its promotion, to facilitate the transactions of the Palestinians in Syria and to discuss joint threats,” according to a Syrian government source told the French Press Agency.
Abbas is accompanied on his visit, which is his first to Syria since the overthrow of a regime Bashar al -Assad On December 8, 2024, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization Hussein Al -Sheikh and member of the Executive Committee Ahmed Majdalani.
The President of the Republic, Mr. Ahmed Al -Shara and Foreign Minister, Mr. Asaad Al -Shaibani, receive Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his accompanying delegation at the People’s Palace in Damascus.#SANA pic.twitter.com/xn4iip3sq6
– The Syrian Arab News Agency – SANA (@sanaajel) April 18, 2025
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the number of Palestinians in Syria before the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011 was approximately 560,000 people. The UN agency is currently about 438,000, more than 40% of them are displaced within the country.
In the years after the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, Abbas sent messages to Assad through Palestinian officials who visited Damascus, the last of which was in June 2024.
Abbas was among the leaders who congratulated the Sharia for assuming the presidency in Syria during the transitional phase after the overthrow of Assad.
The two presidents met Sharia and Abbas for the first time in March on the sidelines of the emergency Arab summit held in Cairo last March.
Abbas at the time expressed his “great pride in the established historical brotherly relations that bring together the two countries and the two peoples,” according to the official Palestinian News Agency (Wafa).
And late last January, a Palestinian delegation headed by Prime Minister Mohamed Mostafa visited the Syrian capital and met the Sharia.
Since the fall of Bashar al -Assad on the eighth of last December, the Israeli occupation forces have penetrated into areas in southern Syria, and expanded their occupation of the plateau. Golan The Syrian, which has occupied most of them since 1967, in a move condemned the United Nations and Arab countries.
Israel also intensified its air attacks targeting military sites in different parts of Syria, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the Syrian south to be fully removed.
