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Amid the horrors of Israel's genocidal war and the repeated displacement of the Gaza Strip's Palestinians for more than fourteen months, a ray of joy emerged among Syrian refugees in Gaza, after they woke up to news of the end of Assad's rule. They now have high hopes over going back to their homeland.

Syrian opposition fighters of the capital Damascus without bloodshed on 8 December 2024, suddenly ending Bashar al-Assad's rule after a 13-year civil war and over five decades of his family's authoritarian grip on the country.

Wareef Qassem is a young Syrian man from Aleppo who was forced to flee to the Gaza Strip in 2012. Qassem married a Gazan, had a daughter named Elia, and opened a restaurant in Gaza City until he became one of the sons of this city, sharing their suffering under the Israeli occupation.

Qassem wrote in a on Facebook on 8 December 2024, following the fall of Assad's regime: "On my wedding day, I raised my flag high, confident that my country would one day be free from injustice and tyranny. I am now celebrating the wedding of free Syria, the new Syria, the Syria of tolerance, the Syria of culture, history and civilisation."

Hopes and ironies

Qassem told °®Âþµº, "I left Aleppo 13 years ago while explosive barrels were falling over our heads, and today I live in Gaza with continuous Israeli raids and genocide."

"It is as if it is an irony of fate that I have to flee from Assad's crimes in Syria to suffer Israel's crimes in Gaza," he added.

Qassem recalls how the Assad regime's crimes impacted his life, "This regime killed my uncle, destroyed our house in Aleppo, and another uncle is still missing in the regime’s prisons."

He believes that the people of Gaza deserve a future like the one that the Syrians recently may have, to feel freedom and security and an end to killing and destruction.

While he hopes to survive this Israeli war so that he can return to his family in Aleppo, he also pointed out that the passports of Syrians in Gaza have expired, and he urges that the Syrian embassy in Ramallah will solve their problem and renew their passports.

"My return to Aleppo does not mean that I will leave Gaza forever, which I love. Rather, I will open another branch of my restaurant in my homeland, and I will continue to move between Syria and Gaza," he added.

Anas Ma'shouq, 30 years old, is another Syrian refugee who sought refuge in Gaza in 2013. "I fled to Gaza with my mother, so that I would not join the regime's army, so that I would not carry weapons against my people," he toldÌýTNA.

"My mother decided to choose Gaza as a place of refuge because she loved the land of Palestine, which we were raised to love," he added.

Ma'shouq expressed his overwhelming joy at the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, describing this event as "a historic event in our lives as Syrians."

"Despite the end of the fear we felt from the Assad regime, we, as Syrians in Gaza, still feel fear from the Israeli bombardment and the ongoing genocide that does not differentiate between Syrians and Palestinians," he stressed.

During the ongoing war, Ma'shouq, with his mother, was displaced from the northern Gaza Strip to the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, and currently is living in a tent inside a camp for displaced Palestinians.

Ma'shouq dreams of returning to Syria soon, saying, "I wish peace for Gaza as I wished peace for my Syrian people, and I hope the war ends so that I can return to Syria as soon as possible."

Ma'shouq describes the people of Gaza as "a sophisticated, friendly people who love life but seek to liberate their land from the occupation," noting that the people of Gaza face a harsh life because of this Israeli occupation.

Only a handful of families remaining

The head of the Syrian Refugee Coordination Committee in Gaza, Mahmoud Abu Shawish, noted toÌýTNA that the conflict in Syria forced 26 Syrian families to seek refuge in Gaza, of which only nine families remain now, while the rest have immigrated to Western countries due to the many wars and difficult living conditions in Gaza.

"About 265 families of Syrian Palestinians have also sought refuge in Gaza due to the conflict in Syria. They are Palestinians who displaced from their homeland to Syria in 1948, as part of the events of the Palestinian Nakba,"ÌýAbu Shawish added.

"Today, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, the Syrian refugees in Gaza have only one dream: the end of the Israeli war and allowing them to return to their homeland, Syria," he added.

Palestinians in Gaza also joined in Syrian refugees' joy of the end of Assad's rule, with great hopes for the end of the Israeli war they have been facing for more than 14 months.

For his part, writer and political analyst Muhammad Awad, opined that the events in the Gaza Strip caused the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's rule and the opposition's final success in ousting him.

Awad argued toÌýTNA that the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation, launched by Hamas against Israel on 7 October 2023, "inspired the Syrian revolutionaries and encouraged them to launch the battle to liberate Syria from the Assad regime on 27 November."

He explained that the Gaza war changed the balance of power in Syria, as the Assad regime relied on Iran and Hezbollah to maintain its rule, "but the battles that erupted between Hezbollah and Iran on the one hand and Israel on the other hand weakened Iran and Hezbollah's ability to protect the Assad regime in Syria, which paved the way for the collapse of his rule in a few days."