Palestinian President Abbas visits Syria for first time in 16 years

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met Syrian leader Ahmed Al Sharaa in Damascus on Friday, on his first visit to Syria in 16 years.
According to a Syrian government source, the pair were expected to discuss reinforcing ties between Syria and the Palestinians, as well as the "threats" faced by both parties.

According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), 560,000 Palestinians lived in Syria before the outbreak of civil war in 2011.  Around 438,000 remain, 40 per cent of whom were displaced during the war.

Abbas last visited in 2009, meeting then-president Bashar Al Assad, who was toppled in December by a rebel alliance headed by Sharaa.

Abbas and Sharaa met for the first time on the sidelines of an Arab summit in March aimed at hammering out a plan for rebuilding the devastated Gaza Strip, where Palestinian group Hamas has been at war with Israel since October 2023.

Earlier, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani met in Qatar Sharaa, the first encounter between the two leaders, Iraqi and Syrian state news agencies reported.

The meeting was brokered by Qatar, with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani present. It came ahead of Sharaa's expected attendance at the Arab Summit in Baghdad on May 17.

In January, Sharaa was named as interim president and pledged to form an inclusive transitional government that would build up Syria's gutted public institutions and run the country until elections, which he said could take up to five years to hold.

Agencies