Category World News

The Road to Damascus documents the lightning offensive that toppled the al-Assad regime.

“[The death of Yasser Abu Shabab] marks the end of a dark chapter – one that did not reflect our tribe’s history and principles …The Tarabin tribe stands with the Palestinian resistance in all its factions … it refuses to let our tribe’s name or members be exploited to form militias that work for the benefit of the occupation.”

This is what Gaza’s Tarabin tribe said in a statement following the killing of its member Yasser Abu Shabab on December 4. There have been conflicting reports about how he died and who killed him. Some have said it was Hamas fighters who shot him, others that members of his own tribe did. Reportedly, he was taken to an Israeli hospital, where he died of his wounds.

Israel framed the killing as a “tribal dispute” rather than retribution for his collaboration; this was also the position of the Popular Forces militia, which Abu Shabab commanded. This narrative, of course, ignores the fact that his own tribe saw him as a collaborator and welcomed his death.

Throughout the war, Abu Shabab’s name was synonymous with collaboration with Israel. He was a key partner in Gaza in securing safe passage for Israeli troops, searching for Israeli captives, killing Palestinian resistance members, and, most infamously, looting aid trucks. Before he was killed, Abu Shabab was reportedly being considered for the position of governor of Rafah to be appointed by Israel.

His death deals a massive blow to Israel’s efforts to establish a new Palestinian administration in Gaza that responds to its wishes and oppresses the Palestinians. It is yet another proof that the Palestinian people will never accept colonial rule.

For decades, Israel has used collaborators to undermine Palestinian unity and governance. In the early 1980s, it spearheaded the creation of so-called “village leagues” in the occupied West Bank. These represented institutions of local rule headed by individuals funded and protected by Israel in exchange for their loyalty. The aim was to diminish the influence of the Palestine Liberation Organization and spread disunity. However, the leagues were rejected by the Palestinians as illegitimate, and the whole initiative collapsed within a few years.

Now Israel is trying to replicate the same model in Gaza. Funding and arming Abu Shabab was supposed to create a centre of coercive power in Gaza, which would have been fully loyal to Israel. It would have allowed the Israeli occupation to come after the resistance, exterminating its fighters, without having to get its soldiers involved any more or bearing the diplomatic cost of doing so.

Even if Abu Shabab had not succeeded in establishing control over Rafah or the whole of Gaza, sowing internal conflict would have been beneficial enough for Israel. It would have undermined internal security in Gaza, damaging the cohesion of the Palestinian society and encouraging people to leave.

But just like in the past, Israel’s plan was doomed to fail.

Although Abu Shabab had significant financial and military support from the occupation, he could not convince his tribe to follow him or the people of Rafah to join him. He was only able to recruit takfiri extremists, criminals and formerly imprisoned collaborators.

The vast majority of Palestinians saw him as a collaborator. Abu Shabab could not recruit even among those who oppose or dislike the resistance factions because they too would not sell out their principles and work for the genocidal power killing Palestinians every day.

While Abu Shabab provided Israel with security and technical services on the ground, his power was built entirely on crimes and theft, which made him just a hated traitor, not a leader. Despite bragging in videos about giving away stolen aid to the poor or building tent camps with looted tents, he was unable to rally people behind himself.

The Israeli plan to make Abu Shabab into a governor failed because it failed to take into account that one cannot build legitimate governance on crimes.

As much as Israel tried to protect him, his death was inevitable. His tribe and others in Rafah could not accept his collaboration with the occupation, which hurt their honour and longstanding moral ground.

When news of Abu Shabab’s death spread, people in Gaza celebrated, going out into the streets and distributing sweets. Palestinians who had different perspectives about Hamas’s actions were united in their joy. Israel’s attempt to put its hand on Gaza’s future was severed.

Abu Shabab’s death, in the end, sent a powerful message: that any collaborator is a target and no collaborator can achieve legitimacy. After more than two years of genocide, the Palestinian people’s spirit has not broken; they have not given up on their land and on their just cause.

Ziad Mahmoud al-Amayiri sat with photographs of his 10 lost family members laid out in front of him.

“There are two options: either the government gives me justice, or I take justice myself.”

Al-Amayiri’s threat is directed at one man: Fadi Saqr.

Saqr was a commander of the National Defence Forces (NDF), a militia loyal to Bashar al-Assad that was accused of atrocities like the 2013 Tadamon massacre, where, according to local Syrian officials, activists and leaked videos, dozens of people were led to a pit and shot.

However, Saqr denies any links to what happened in Tadamon. He told The New York Times that he was not the NDF’s leader at the time.

But al-Amayiri insists Saqr should be behind bars for the disappearance of his loved ones, who he says were arrested by NDF fighters in 2013.

Instead, Saqr is walking free.

Hassan Soufan, a member of the government-appointed Committee for Civil Peace, says Saqr was “granted safe passage” by Syria’s new leadership “at the beginning of the liberation”.

Soufan said Saqr’s release was part of a strategy to calm tensions because of his links to Alawite groups in the region.

“No one can deny that this safe passage contributed to averting bloodshed,” said Soufan.

But that was not enough to satisfy many Syrians, especially in Tadamon, where residents demanded that Saqr be tried in court.

“How was the government able to forgive Fadi Saqr with the blood of our families?” said al-Amayiri, speaking of the 10 loved ones he has lost.

“I don’t think they will be able to hold him accountable after that.”

Syria’s fragile peace

A year on since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s new leadership is dealing with the very real danger of people feeling frustrated by justice efforts being delayed or denied.

After taking power, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said he would prioritise “achieving civil peace” and “prosecuting criminals who spilt Syrian blood … through genuine transitional justice”.

But the last year has been marked by sectarian fighting – and there has been a marked rise in so-called revenge killings.

As of November 2025, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that 1,301 people had died in what it described as “retaliatory actions” since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024.

These statistics do not include the people killed during the violent clashes on either the Syrian coast in March or in Suwayda in July.

The coastal massacres alone resulted in the death of 1,400 people, mainly civilians, according to a United Nations report.

The clashes in Suwayda, triggered by fighting between Druze and Bedouin communities, killed hundreds, the majority of them Druze.

In his first interview with an English-language outlet, Abdel Basit Abdel Latif, head of the National Commission for Transitional Justice, acknowledged the risks of stalled justice.

“It is certain that any Syrian citizen will feel that if the transitional justice process does not start properly, they will resort to their own ways, which is something we do not wish for,” Abdel Latif said.

Ibrahim al-Assil from the Atlantic Council says it is an example of a conundrum often seen in transitional justice: pursuing justice versus keeping the peace.

“Which one comes first? It’s very important to realise that they do need to work hand in hand, but things are never ideal.”

Transitional justice in Syria

The government has set up two bodies to oversee transitional justice.

One, headed by Abdel Latif, tackles transitional justice more broadly, addressing violations committed by the former regime.

The other is focused on investigating the estimated 300,000 Syrians considered missing and widely believed to have disappeared into al-Assad’s notorious prison system and buried in mass graves.

While the scale of the missing is often reported as more than 100,000 people, the head of the National Commission on Missing Persons believes it is approximately 300,000.

Ever since the fall, there have been concerns that this number is rising, with UN Human Rights spokesperson Thameen al-Kheetan saying they “continue to receive worrying reports about dozens of abductions and enforced disappearances”.

Both national committees have met international experts to draw lessons from other transitional justice processes.

But Danny al-Baaj, vice president for advocacy and public relations at the Syrian Forum, believes “we’re far behind any real progress”.

“A framework is still missing. A special law on transitional justice is still missing,” he said.

The families of the hundreds of thousands of forcibly disappeared Syrians are also demanding answers.

Wafa Ali Mustafa is a Syrian activist whose father, Ali Mustafa, was arrested in the capital, Damascus, 12 years ago.

“Families of the detainees are not going on the streets every day saying that now you have to dig mass graves,” she said.

“They’re saying at least communicate with us, at least let us know what you are doing.”

The head of the National Commission on Missing Persons, Mohammad Reda Jalkhi, explained that Syria needs a huge amount of resources.

“We need to do very hard work on building capacity, preparing the infrastructure, collecting data, analysing data, and equipping laboratories,” Jalkhi said.

“All this does not happen overnight.”

The government has made dozens of arrests, including people linked to the former regime.

It has been posting glossy videos on social media of prison guards making confessions and suspects appearing before judges.

But questions remain about transparency.

“Of course, every time they arrest someone, people get very, very happy and grateful,” Wafa added.

“Unfortunately, we don’t really know what’s happening to these people, we don’t know where they’re being held, we don’t know what kind of investigation they’re being exposed to.”

There is also ambiguity around arrests of security and military personnel who were linked to sectarian violence in Suwayda earlier this year, which killed hundreds of people.

But the lead investigator of the Suwayda killings declined to say how many.

“My problem with the mass arrests,” said al-Baaj, “is that it’s not according to a plan.”

“We don’t know how the government is doing its work.”

Holding perpetrators accountable

One of the big hopes among Syrians is for public, national trials of Assad-era war crimes.

Hasan al-Hariri helped to smuggle more than 1.3 million pieces of documentary evidence out of Syria.

Since the start of the war in 2011, he has been working for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), which specialises in collecting criminal evidence.

Al-Hariri led a team of people who would locate and retrieve paperwork from places like regime intelligence buildings and police stations – in areas where al-Assad’s forces had been driven out, or while fighting was still going on.

They then came up with creative ways to sneak the valuable documents through military checkpoints and eventually across the border.

“Sometimes we used to take advantage of moving furniture,” al-Hariri said.

“We used to put the documents underneath the car’s floor and fill it with the furniture of the house.”

CIJA now has a vast archive of security, military and intelligence documents that link war crimes to regime officials at the highest levels, all the way up to al-Assad himself.

“Countries that saw conflicts, such as Bosnia, began work after five years and started collecting evidence, so the evidence was gone, or only a few simple things could be collected,” al-Hariri said.

“We worked during the conflict, so the evidence was alive.”

But while that suggests Syria has a head-start in the judicial process, national trials are still a long way away.

The Assad-era legal system is still being reformed.

“It needs legal infrastructure, administrative infrastructure, courts, judges, and resources,” said al-Baaj.

But he added that there is an eagerness among Syrians.

“All of us want to see these public trials, want to see the whole process of transitional justice starting.”

That includes people like al-Amayiri, who wants to see Saqr face trial.

But he says his biggest desire is to be able to mourn his loved ones.

“It is now a dream for us to have a grave for our family to visit,” he said.

As Gaza fades from world headlines, Muslim scholar Omar Suleiman tells Al Jazeera that abandoning the Palestinian struggle now would repeat the very failures that enabled Israel’s genocidal war.