Category World News

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.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has affirmed support for the creation of a Palestinian state, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again rejected such a move, during the German leader’s inaugural visit to the country.

At a joint press conference on Sunday following a meeting in Jerusalem, the two leaders spoke of their respective priorities for Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Merz’s trip is playing out under the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – although Merz, leader of one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, does not consider it a genocide.

Merz told the news conference that Germany, one of Israel’s most unwavering allies, wanted a new Middle East that recognised a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.

“Our conviction is that the prospective establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel presumably offers the best prospect for this future,” the German chancellor said.

But he said his government had no intention of recognising a Palestinian state “in the foreseeable future”.

“The German federal government remains of the opinion that recognition of a Palestinian state should come at the end – not the beginning – of such a process (peace negotiations),” he said, putting Germany at odds with several other key European nations, including France, Spain and the Untied Kingdom, who have all confirmed formal recognition.

But Netanyahu said that the Israeli public was opposed to any two-state solution, and that the political annexation of the occupied West Bank – a concern raised by Merz and also rejected by the administration of United States President Donald Trump – remained a subject of discussion, although the status quo was expected to remain for the foreseeable future.

“The purpose of a Palestinian state is to destroy the Jewish state,” Netanyahu claimed without expanding.

The Israeli premier added that the first phase of Trump’s Gaza plan was nearly completed, and that he would be having “very important conversations” at the end of December on how to ensure the second phase would be achieved.

He would also meet Trump later this month, he added.

Relationship strained over Gaza

The war on Gaza has tested the traditionally strong ties between Israel and Germany, for whom support for Israel is a core tenet of its foreign policy, built in during decades of historical guilt over the Third Reich’s Holocaust.

In August, Israel’s actions in Gaza drove Germany – Israel’s second-largest arms supplier after the US – to restrict sales of weapons for use in Gaza. At the time, Merz said – in a public criticism of Israel that was rare for a German leader – that his government could no longer ignore the worsening toll on civilians in the besieged and bombarded enclave.

Netanyahu expressed his anger at the restrictions, which were lifted two weeks ago.

Speaking at the news conference, Merz said the decision to restrict weapons sales had changed nothing “in our very basic attitude towards Israel and Israel’s security, in our support of Israel, in our military support of Israel as well.”

No reciprocal visit on cards

Merz’s visit – coming seven months since he assumed power – has come relatively late in his tenure as chancellor compared to his predecessors, with Olaf Scholz having visited Israel after three months and Angela Merkel after two.

Speaking at the press conference in Jerusalem, Merz said the leaders did not discuss a visit by Netanyahu – who faces an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza from the International Criminal Court (ICC) – to Berlin.

“We did not discuss the possibility of Prime Minister Netanyahu travelling to Germany. There is no reason to discuss this at the moment,” Merz told reporters.

“If time permits, I would issue such an invitation if appropriate. But this is not an issue for either of us at the present time.”

Earlier this year, Merz vowed to invite the Israeli leader and assured him he would not be arrested on German soil.

In the meantime, back in Germany, activists in the capital Berlin held a demonstration to condemn Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, to demand a halt to arms exports to Israel, and to express their support for Palestine.

There has also been criticism from the political opposition in Germany to Merz making the trip at all to meet a leader with an ICC arrest warrant hanging over him.

Germany ‘must stand up’ for Israel

Prior to meeting Netanyahu, Merz had visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where he reiterated Berlin’s enduring support.

During the visit, he said “Germany must stand up for the existence and security of Israel,” after acknowledging his country’s “enduring historical responsibility” for the mass extermination of Jews during World War II.

On his arrival in Israel on Saturday, Merz was met at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who called Merz “a friend of Israel”. He then met Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem later that evening.

German support resolute despite criticism

Reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said the relationship between Germany and Israel remained “very strong”, despite recent strains over Gaza.

Not only had Germany resumed arms exports to Israel following a short-lived partial suspension, but it had recently signed a $4.5bn deal for an Israeli-made missile defence shield, reportedly the largest arms export agreement in Israeli history.

Speaking at Sunday’s news conference, Netanyahu said the deal reflected a “historical change” in Israel’s relationship with Germany.

“Not only does Germany work in the defence of Israel, but Israel, the Jewish state, 80 years after the Holocaust, works for the defence of Germany,” he said.

Odeh said Germany’s support had proven controversial at home and abroad, and had seen Germany being accused of complicity in genocide for its military support to Israel, before judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled against issuing emergency orders to stop German arms exports.

“The visit itself is quite controversial given that Germany is a member of the International Criminal Court and is obliged to hand over Netanyahu to the court, not meet with him,” Odeh noted.

She said Israel had little tolerance for criticism from Germany, but understood that its occasional comments taking issue with its actions had little bearing on Berlin’s policy response.

Soldiers in Benin appeared on state television to say they had toppled President Patrice Talon and taken power. But government officials say they thwarted the attempted coup and remain in control.

I grew up less than a mile from Shepherds’ Field in Beit Sahour in the occupied West Bank – the hillside where, according to the Gospel of Luke, the news of Jesus’s birth was first proclaimed. For my family, these were not distant biblical landscapes. They were the backdrop of our daily lives: The olive groves we played in, the terraces we tended, the land where our faith and identity were rooted.

Today, for the first time in my life, I felt fear that the community that raised me may not survive.

In recent weeks, a new illegal Israeli settlement outpost has been established on the edge of Beit Sahour. Caravans and construction equipment have appeared on a site the town had hoped to use for a children’s hospital, cultural centre, and public spaces – projects supported by international donors and meant to strengthen a Christian community that has endured for centuries. Instead, those plans are now suspended, and the families who live nearby are bracing for uncertainty, rising tension, and the real possibility of further displacement.

Others have documented the legal and political ramifications of these settlements. My concern is more personal and more urgent: What is happening today threatens the very continuity of Christian presence in the Bethlehem area – not abstractly, but concretely.

Beit Sahour is one of the last majority-Christian towns in the West Bank. Our families are Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical. We worship together, marry across traditions, and share a heritage that traces back to the earliest centuries of the Christian story. But like many Palestinian communities, we are running out of land – and with it, out of time.

Due to decades of confiscation, the separation wall, and settlement expansion, only a small fraction of our town remains accessible for Palestinian construction. Youth who wish to build homes often cannot. Parents worry about their children’s future. Families who want to stay rooted in their ancestral land face barriers that make leaving seem like the only viable path.

That is how communities disappear. Not because they stop believing, but because the conditions required for them to flourish are steadily stripped away by the Israeli military occupation of their land.

For many Christians around the world – especially in the United States – this situation creates real confusion. I hear it often: “We support Israel because we care about the Jewish people. We don’t want to see them harmed, displaced, or endangered ever again. So what do we do when Palestinian Christians say they are suffering too?”

This is a sincere question, shaped by conscience and by history. And yet it reveals a painful misunderstanding – the idea that supporting Jewish security requires tolerating the dispossession of others, or that acknowledging Palestinian suffering threatens the safety of Jews.

It does not. It never has.

The aspiration for Jewish safety is legitimate and deeply important – especially after centuries of anti-Semitism, culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust. No person of faith should ever be indifferent to the vulnerability of Jewish communities.

But affirming Jewish safety does not require silence when Palestinian Christian and Muslim families lose their land, face escalating violence, or see their future shrinking. Safety for one people cannot be built on the insecurity of another. There is no moral framework – Christian, Jewish, or secular – that asks us to choose between the dignity of one child and the dignity of another.

If anything, the deeply biblical truth is that justice is indivisible. When we diminish one community’s rights to protect another, both are ultimately harmed.

And yet, too often, many churches in the West remain silent when Palestinian Christians raise their voices. Every December, American congregations sing about Bethlehem without acknowledging that many families in the Bethlehem area are struggling to stay on their land. Pilgrims visit Shepherds’ Field without asking what is happening to the people who have cared for it across generations.

This silence is not intentional malice. In many cases, it stems from fear of appearing partisan, or from the mistaken belief that speaking about Palestinian suffering undermines support for Jewish safety.

But silence has consequences. It sends an unspoken message that some lives matter less. It weakens the moral credibility of the Church. And it leaves communities like mine – Christian families who have lived in Bethlehem’s hills more than 2,000 years – feeling abandoned by the very global body they belong to.

What is happening in Beit Sahour is not simply a political conflict. It is a question of human dignity and the future of a Christian witness in the place where the Christian story began. If the Christian community in Bethlehem’s district disappears, the loss will not only be Palestinian. It will be a loss for the global Church and for anyone who cares about the continuity of the gospel’s birthplace.

I grew up less than a mile from these fields. I know what is at stake. And I believe that American Christians can hold two truths at the same time: That the Jewish people deserve safety, and that Palestinian Christian communities deserve to live on their land without fear.

This is not a choice between peoples. It is a choice between justice and indifference.