Exclusive - Syrian Refugees Trickle Back to Qusayr under Watchful Eyes of the Regime, Hezbollah

Returnees walk together and hold Syrian flags as they enter the city of Qusayr, Syria July 7, 2019. (Reuters)
Returnees walk together and hold Syrian flags as they enter the city of Qusayr, Syria July 7, 2019. (Reuters)
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Exclusive - Syrian Refugees Trickle Back to Qusayr under Watchful Eyes of the Regime, Hezbollah

Returnees walk together and hold Syrian flags as they enter the city of Qusayr, Syria July 7, 2019. (Reuters)
Returnees walk together and hold Syrian flags as they enter the city of Qusayr, Syria July 7, 2019. (Reuters)

“I want to be buried in my hometown, al-Qusayr,” said a retired school teacher who has been worn down by years of misery and old age that caught up with him soon after he and his family were displaced in from his town in 2012.

The teacher, 65, recently became one of many refugees who returned to Qusayr in recent months. He returned to his home, which was all but destroyed during the Syrian war. All that stands is a single room.

Asked by Asharq Al-Awsat about why he returned knowing that his house was in ruins, he replied: “Living in a tent over property that I own is a thousand times easier than living as a refugee in a rented home.”

“I have spent years in displacement and pray to God that I die in Qusayr,” he added.

Strategic importance

Qusayr lies 35 kilometers west of Homs and 15 kms from the border with Lebanon. The city witnessed in 2013 the first and largest wave of displacement during the Syrian war. At the peak of the unrest only a handful of the 65,000 residents remained in the city. The population is predominantly Sunni with Christian, Alawite and Shiite minorities.

The picture has since changed after the Syrian regime and Lebanese Hezbollah party imposed their control over the city and its countryside.

Qusayr holds strategic importance to Hezbollah because it links the Lebanese Bekaa region to the central Syrian province of Homs. It is accessed through the Jousiyeh crossing that was set up in 1919. Qusayr was also a significant trade hub between Homs and northern Lebanon.

Soon after the regime captured Qusayr from opposition factions, its ally, Hezbollah set up major centers throughout the roads connecting Homs to Lebanon. Qusayr was inaccessible except to its residents, who were still living there. After the reopening of the Jousiyeh crossing in 2017, travelers heading to Lebanon were allowed to pass through the area, local sources told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Once Jousiyeh was reopened, pro-regime residents, mainly Alawites, Shiites and Christians, were allowed to return. Some 8,000 people have gradually returned between 2013 and 2017. Up until July this year, Sunnis were barred from returning. Even then, only those not suspected of anti-regime activity were allowed to come back.

Destruction

The first batch of refugees returned to Qusayr’s Hezbollah-held western countryside in July. Exposing who really controls the region, the some 1,000 returnees were seen waving the Hezbollah flag, far outnumbering official Syrian flags and images of regime leader Bashar Assad. The second batch, of some 5,000 people, arrived in October. This time, the majority waved regime flags and Assad posters. Since 2013, some 14,000 residents have returned to what was left of their homes.

With very limited means, they struggled to rebuild Qusayr as they awaited aid from charities, civil and public agencies. The city council was also unable to cope with the massive reconstruction. Neighborhoods that were seized by opposition factions were almost completely destroyed, in contrast to the districts that never escaped the clutches of the regime during clashes with the opposition. Pro-regime residents, Hezbollah and security stations are located in these districts.

Overall, the city lacks the most basic infrastructure. Sewage systems remain mostly inadequate, power cuts are frequent and water is in short supply.

A refugee from Qusayr, currently residing in Lebanon, told Asharq Al-Awsat that prior to the war, people from Homs and nearby Lebanese villages used to flock to Qusayr for their daily needs, education and medical treatments. Bread produced from the city used to be enough to feed all neighboring areas. Smuggling from Lebanon of various goods that were not available in Syria was also active.

This led to the development of close ties between the surrounding areas. These relations rose above sectarian and political interests and Hezbollah was virtually nonexistent in the area.

At the turn of the 21st century, fuel began to be smuggled from Syria to Lebanon through Qusayr. This led to the emergence of fierce outlaws, who were controlled by corrupt figures in the regime’s security apparatus. The situation was exacerbated further with the beginning of the smuggling of drugs from Lebanon to Syria after 2005.

This naturally led to increased school dropouts, higher unemployment, a weakening economy and fragmentation of the traditional social and economic fabric.

Hezbollah control

After the displacement of the people in 2013, Hezbollah seized the region west of the Orontes (Assi) River. The party succeeded in recruiting residents of the region to fight in its ranks against their own fellow Syrians. The party also seized control of all legal and illegal border crossings between Qusayr and Lebanon. The region consequently became the most important drugs smuggling route from Lebanon to Syria and then from Syria to the Mediterranean through Latakia port.

In the city itself, Hezbollah captured several properties and buildings and transformed them into party headquarters, barring their owners from accessing them. The party also seized agricultural fields to grow its cannabis crops, transforming it into a lucrative gang-run business linked to regional networks.



From 1948 to Now, a Palestinian Woman in Gaza Recounts a Life of Displacement 

Ghalia Abu Moteir, whose family fled what is now Israel during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation, shelters from the current war in a tent in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, after being displaced from her home in Rafah, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP)
Ghalia Abu Moteir, whose family fled what is now Israel during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation, shelters from the current war in a tent in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, after being displaced from her home in Rafah, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP)
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From 1948 to Now, a Palestinian Woman in Gaza Recounts a Life of Displacement 

Ghalia Abu Moteir, whose family fled what is now Israel during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation, shelters from the current war in a tent in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, after being displaced from her home in Rafah, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP)
Ghalia Abu Moteir, whose family fled what is now Israel during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation, shelters from the current war in a tent in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, after being displaced from her home in Rafah, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP)

As a 4-year-old, Ghalia Abu Moteir was driven to live in a tent in Khan Younis after her family fled their home in what’s now Israel, escaping advancing Israeli forces. Seventy-seven years later, she is now back in a tent under the bombardment of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

On Thursday, Palestinians across the Middle East commemorated the anniversary of the “Nakba” -- Arabic for “the Catastrophe” -- when some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled by Israeli forces or fled their homes in what is now Israel before and during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation.

Abu Moteir’s life traces the arc of Palestinians’ exile and displacement from that war to the current one. Israel’s 19-month-old campaign has flattened much of Gaza, killed more than 53,000 people, driven almost the entire population of 2.3 million from their homes and threatens to push them into famine.

“Today we’re in a bigger Nakba than the Nakba that we saw before,” the 81-year-old Abu Moteir said, speaking outside the tent where she lives with her surviving sons and daughters and 45 grandchildren.

“Our whole life is terror, terror. Day and night, there’s missiles and warplanes overhead. We’re not living. If we were dead, it would be more merciful,” she said.

Palestinians fear that Israel’s ultimate goal is to drive them from the Gaza Strip completely. Israel says its campaign aims to destroy Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, attack in which gunmen killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted around 250 others.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that after Israel defeats Hamas, it will continue to control Gaza and will encourage Palestinians to leave “voluntarily.”

Ghalia Abu Moteir, whose family fled what is now Israel during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation, shelters from the current war in a tent in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, after being displaced from her home in Rafah, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP)

From tent city to tent city

The Gaza Strip was born out of the Nakba. Some 200,000 of the 1948 refugees were driven into the small coastal area, and more than 70% of Gaza’s current population are their descendants. Gaza’s borders were set in an armistice between Israel and Egypt, which along with other Arab countries had attacked after Israel declared its independence.

Abu Moteir doesn’t remember much from her home village, Wad Hunayn, a small hamlet thick with citrus groves just southeast of Tel Aviv. Her parents fled with her and her three brothers as the nascent forces of Israel moved into the area, fighting local Palestinian groups and expelling some communities.

“We left only with the clothes we had on us, no ID, no nothing,” Abu Moteir said. She remembers walking along the Mediterranean coast amid gunfire. Her father, she said, put the children behind him, trying to protect them.

They walked 75 kilometers (45 miles) to Khan Younis, where they settled in a tent city that sprang up to house thousands of refugees. There, UNRWA, a new UN agency created to care for them – temporarily, it was thought at the time – provided food and supplies, while the Gaza Strip came under Egyptian rule.

After two years in a tent, her family moved further south to Rafah and built a home. Abu Moteir’s father died of illness in the early 1950s. When Israeli forces stormed through Gaza to invade Egypt’s Sinai in 1956, the family fled again, to central Gaza, before returning to Rafah. In the years after the 1967 Middle East War, when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, Abu Moteir’s mother and brothers left for Jordan.

Abu Moteir, by that time married with children, stayed behind.

“I witnessed all the wars,” she said. “But not one is like this war.”

A year ago, her family fled Rafah as Israeli troops invaded the city. They now live in the sprawling tent city of Muwasi on the coast outside Khan Younis. An airstrike killed one of her sons, leaving behind three daughters, a son and his pregnant wife, who has since given birth. Three of Abu Moteir’s grandchildren have also been killed.

Throughout the war, UNRWA has led a massive aid effort by humanitarian groups to keep Palestinians alive. But for the past 10 weeks, Israel has barred all food, fuel, medicines and other supplies from entering Gaza, saying it aims to force Hamas to release 58 remaining hostages, fewer than half believed alive.

Israel also says Hamas has been siphoning off aid in large quantities, a claim the UN denies. Israel has banned UNRWA, saying it has been infiltrated by Hamas, which the agency denies.

Hunger and malnutrition in the territory have spiraled as food stocks run out.

“Here in Muwasi, there’s no food or water,” said Abu Moteir. “The planes strike us. Our children are thrown (dead) in front of us.”

Ghalia Abu Moteir, whose family fled what is now Israel during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation, shelters from the current war in a tent in Khan Younis, Gaza, after being displaced from her home in Rafah, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP)

Devastation tests Palestinians' will to stay

Generations in Gaza since 1948 have been raised on the idea of “sumoud,” Arabic for “resilience,” the need to stand strong for their land and their right to return to their old homes inside Israel. Israel has refused to allow refugees back, saying a mass return would leave the country without a Jewish majority.

While most Palestinians say they don’t want to leave Gaza, the destruction wreaked by Israeli forces is shaking that resilience among some.

“I understand that ... There is no choice here. To stay alive, you’d have to leave Gaza,” said Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network in Gaza, though he said he would never leave.

He dismissed Netanyahu’s claims that any migration would be voluntary. “Israel made Gaza not suitable for living for decades ahead,” he said.

Noor Abu Mariam, a 21-year-old in Gaza City, grew up knowing the story of her grandparents, who were expelled by Israeli forces from their town outside the present-day Israeli city of Ashkelon in 1948.

Her family was forced to flee their home in Gaza City early in the war. They returned during a two-month ceasefire earlier this year. Their area is now under Israeli evacuation orders, and they fear they will be forced to move again.

Her family is thinking of leaving if the border opens, Abu Mariam said.

“I could be resilient if there were life necessities available like food and clean water and houses,” she said. “Starvation is what will force us to migrate.”

Kheloud al-Laham, a 23-year-old sheltering in Deir al-Balah, said she was “adamant” about staying.

“It’s the land of our fathers and our grandfathers for thousands of years,” she said. “It was invaded and occupied over the course of centuries, so is it reasonable to leave it that easily?”

“What do we return to?” Abu Moteir remembers the few times she was able to leave Gaza over the decades of Israeli occupation.

Once, she went on a group visit to Jerusalem. As their bus passed through Israel, the driver called out the names of the erased Palestinian towns they passed – Isdud, near what’s now the Israeli city of Ashdod; Majdal, now Ashkelon.

They passed not far from where Wadi Hunayn once stood. “But we didn’t get off the bus,” she said.

She knows Palestinians who worked in the Israeli town of Ness Ziona, which stands on what had been Wadi Hunayn. They told her nothing is left of the Palestinian town but one or two houses and a mosque, since converted to a synagogue.

She used to dream of returning to Wadi Hunayn. Now she just wants to go back to Rafah.

But most of Rafah has been leveled, including her family home, she said.

“What do we return to? To the rubble?”