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Arab Finance Ministers to Hold Emergency Meeting in Support of PA

Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian boy during clashes in West Bank. Reuters file photo
Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian boy during clashes in West Bank. Reuters file photo
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Arab Finance Ministers to Hold Emergency Meeting in Support of PA

Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian boy during clashes in West Bank. Reuters file photo
Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian boy during clashes in West Bank. Reuters file photo

The Arab League General Secretariat decided to hold an emergency meeting of Arab finance ministers at its headquarters in Cairo early next week to discuss the means to provide a financial safety net for the Palestinian Authority in face of Israeli pressure.
 
Ambassador Hossam Zaki, Assistant Secretary-General of the Arab League, said on Tuesday that it was decided to hold an emergency meeting at the invitation of Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit and in coordination and consultation with the Palestinians.
 
Zaki added that the meeting next week comes in implementation of the resolution issued by the emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers, which was held in Cairo on April 21 in the presence of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The resolution provided for the establishment of a financial safety net of $100 million per month in support of the State of Palestine to cope with political and financial pressures imposed by Israel.
 
On whether there were specific proposals from the Arab League to provide support to the Palestinians, Zaki said: “There are no specific suggestions, but the Palestinian side has welcomed grants and loans from Arab countries or financial institutions so that the Palestinian Authority can recover the funds and repay the loans.”
 
Zaki denied a link between the meeting of Arab finance ministers and the US economic workshop in Bahrain, stressing that the meeting comes in implementation of a previous decision of the Arab League.
 
Meanwhile, Aboul Gheit met on Tuesday with Azzam Al-Ahmad, member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Central Committee of the Fatah Movement.

Discussions touched on latest political developments in the region, especially with regard to the Palestinian cause.

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Arab World

Syrian Opposition Fighters Take the Homes of Assad's Officers

A family member waits for workers to move his family's belongings, following evacuation orders from factions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), after Syria's Bashar Assad was ousted, on the outskirts of Damascus, in Syria, December 29, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
A family member waits for workers to move his family's belongings, following evacuation orders from factions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), after Syria's Bashar Assad was ousted, on the outskirts of Damascus, in Syria, December 29, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
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Syrian Opposition Fighters Take the Homes of Assad's Officers

A family member waits for workers to move his family's belongings, following evacuation orders from factions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), after Syria's Bashar Assad was ousted, on the outskirts of Damascus, in Syria, December 29, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
A family member waits for workers to move his family's belongings, following evacuation orders from factions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), after Syria's Bashar Assad was ousted, on the outskirts of Damascus, in Syria, December 29, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Families of military officers who served under Syria's ousted Bashar Assad are being evicted from their subsidized housing at a compound outside Damascus to make way for victorious former opposition fighters and their families, residents and fighters there said.

The Muadamiyat al-Sham compound housing hundreds of people in over a dozen buildings is one of several such areas set aside for officers under Assad's rule, according to Reuters.

As the military is being restructured around the former opposition forces, with Assad-era officers demobilized, the evictions from military housing are not a surprise.

But their rapid replacement in the accommodation by fighters who spent years in impoverished, rural opposition-held territory shows the sudden reversal of fortune for supporters of each side in the conflict.

Names of factions under the main victorious group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which captured the capital on Dec. 8, are scrawled in spray paint on the entrances to buildings, apparently marking them out for fighters from each entity.

Three fighters at the compound, four women who have been residing there and a local official providing documents to those leaving said officers' families had been given five days to go.

“We will start moving our children's schools, starting our lives over. I am very sad, my heart is broken, it's our lives, my children's lives,” said Budour Makdid, 38, the wife of a former military intelligence officer living in Muadamiyat al-Sham.

Makdid's husband, who has signed papers recognizing the new authorities and handed over his gun, has already returned to his family home in Latakia province, a former Assad stronghold, and Makdid and their children would join him there, she said.

Like other families leaving the area, she needed a document from the municipal authorities to say the family was leaving the accommodation and giving permission to remove their belongings.

Local administrator Khalil al-Ahmad, 69, said families had started approaching him several days ago seeking the document and that around 200 requests for one had been made so far.

Ahmad said he had not been officially contacted by the new administration about the change, and was only made aware of it when residents began to ask him for the documents.

Displaced

Any sign of how Syria's new administration intends to handle former Assad officers, as well as property rights, will be closely watched in a country where millions of people have been displaced since civil war erupted in 2011.

Earlier this month, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was filmed requesting the residents of his family's former home in Damascus to leave and allow his own family to move back.

Some former military families living near the Muadamiyat al-Sham compound but not in the subsidized units from which officers are being evicted are also leaving.

Eidye Zaitoun, 52, was packing her belongings into black plastic bags as she prepared to leave her two-room apartment for the coast. She said her son in the military had moved to the coast too and there was no reason for her to stay.

HTS fighters at the compound were not sympathetic, according to Reuters.