Category World News

December 8 marks one year since the al-Assad dynasty, which lasted 54 years, was removed from power by a rebel offensive.

The 14-year-long war led to one of the world’s largest migration crises, with some 6.8 million Syrians, about a third of the population, fleeing the country at the war’s peak in 2021, seeking refuge wherever they could find it.

More than half of these refugees, about 3.74 million, settled in neighbouring Turkiye, while 840,000 found refuge in Lebanon and 672,000 in Jordan.

The animation below shows the number of Syrian refugees who fled from 2011 to 2025, highlighting the top 10 countries that hosted them.

Now, as Syria is entering a new chapter, millions of refugees and members of the diaspora are weighing the decision to return home and rebuild their lives.

‘The feeling of belonging’

Khalid al-Shatta, a 41-year-old management administration professional from Damascus, decided to return to Syria after fleeing the country in September 2012.

Al-Shatta, along with his wife and one-year-old son, first fled to Jordan by car before flying to Turkiye, which became their temporary home.

Al-Shatta recalls the anticipation surrounding al-Assad’s fall. On the night it happened, he said, everyone stayed up to watch the news.

“The moment Syria was liberated, we made our decision,” he told Al Jazeera. “My family and I came to the conclusion that we have to return to Syria, and be part of its future,” he explained.

Al-Shatta describes returning to Syria for the first time in 13 years and feeling “like I have never left Syria before, with one difference, the feeling of belonging to this country, to this nation, this land”.

How many Syrians have returned from abroad?

Al-Shatta and his family are among the more than 782,000 Syrians documented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) who have returned to Syria from other countries over the past year.

Of those who have arrived from abroad, 170,000 have returned to Aleppo, 134,000 to Homs and 124,000 to rural Damascus.

Since returning to Damascus, al-Shatta has opened his own business, focused on power solutions. However, he says many returnees are struggling to find work with suitable salaries.

“Syria is not cheap [to live] compared with the average salaries; there are job opportunities, yet the salaries are challenging,” he says.

He explains how the quality of life varies greatly for Syria’s population, which now stands at 26.9 million. “Some families are living on $150 to $200 per month, while others live on $1,500 to $2,000, and some earn even more,” he explains.

Despite the rise in returns, limited job opportunities and high living costs continue to undermine long-term resettling. Housing remains unaffordable for many, leaving returnees in damaged homes or expensive rental units.

According to the IOM, while 69 percent of Syrians still own their property, 19 percent are renting, 11 percent are being hosted for free, and 1 percent are squatting.

New EU asylum guidelines

In the days following the fall of al-Assad, several European countries – including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom – announced plans to pause asylum applications from Syrians.

The freeze applied to both new applications and those already in process, leaving many Syrians in limbo about whether they would be accepted, rejected or deported.

As of mid-2025, total asylum applications across the EU+ – European Union countries plus Norway and Switzerland – fell by 23 percent compared with the first half of 2024.

The decline was driven mainly by a steep drop in Syrian applications. Syrians lodged about 25,000 applications in the first half of 2025, a two-thirds decrease from a year earlier.

For the first time in more than a decade, Syrians are no longer the largest nationality group seeking asylum in Europe.

On December 3, the EU issued updated guidance for Syrian asylum applicants, saying opponents of al-Assad and military service evaders “are no longer at risk of persecution”.

Between 2012 and June 2025, EU+ states granted refugee status to approximately 705,000 Syrian applicants, according to the European asylum agency.

Returning to ‘destroyed and demolished’ homes

In addition to the 782,000 Syrians returning from abroad, the IOM has documented nearly 1.8 million internally displaced Syrians returning to their towns over the past year.

This brings the total number of Syrian refugees and IDPs who have returned home over the past year to 2.6 million. Of those internally displaced, 471,000 have returned to Aleppo, nearly 460,000 to Idlib, and 314,000 to Hama.

Talal Nader al-Abdo, 42, from Maaret al-Numan in southern Idlib, was one of the internally displaced Syrians who returned home from a tent where he and his family had been living.

“I was one of the victims of [Bashar al-Assad’s] brutality,” al-Abdo told Al Jazeera.

His family had been internally displaced multiple times, first from Maaret al-Numan, then to Ariha, then to Idlib, and finally to the border camps Kafr Jalis and Harbanoush of northern Syria, where al-Abdo recalls the harsh days they spent in the extreme cold and intense heat.

“When the regime fell, I knew that relief had come, the bombing had ended, and the time was near for us to return to our homes, even though they were destroyed and demolished. We would return and rebuild them,” al-Abdo added.

Throughout the war, al-Abdo, together with his wife, three sons, daughter, and elderly mother, stayed in northwestern Syria “because we had great faith that one day God would grant us relief and we would return home”.

Despite many returning home, there are still more than six million Syrians who remain internally displaced, according to the IOM.

The largest share of those are living in rural Damascus (1.99 million), followed by Aleppo (1.33 million) and Idlib (993,000).

Former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf told Al Jazeera that Israel is carrying out what he calls a “scholasticide” in Gaza, arguing that the destruction of schools and the wider education system is deliberate and part of a broader effort to erase Palestinian society.

A 13-year-old aspiring journalist investigates his father’s death in one of Kenya’s largest wildlife conservation parks.

Hamas is expected to hand over the body of the last Israeli captive held in Gaza in the coming days and has commented that it would be open to discussing “freezing” its weapons to facilitate entering the second phase of the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the second phase would be challenging to achieve but that it could begin as soon as this month.

However, Israel has been attacking Gaza throughout the first phase, killing at least 360 Palestinians, and still restricts the entry of aid, with quantities allowed in far below what was agreed.

So, how has phase one of the ceasefire gone? And what are the chances of it continuing into phase two?

Here’s what we know.

Has Israel observed the ceasefire?

No.

Since the ceasefire began on October 10, Israel has broken it more than 590 times, killing at least 360 Palestinians, and sending the total death toll in Gaza from two years of attacks above 70,000.

Under the first phase – based on US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan – Israel was required to halt its genocidal war on Gaza, pull back its troops, allow aid in, and exchange hundreds of Palestinian detainees for the remaining captives still held in Gaza.

Speaking a month after agreeing to the ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s war on Gaza “has not ended” and that Hamas “will be disarmed”.

Throughout Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Israeli officials have been pledging to “destroy” Hamas and claiming that Israeli bombardment, which has killed mostly civilians according to Israel’s own tally, was to achieve that.

Palestinians in Gaza remain in limbo and suffering daily attacks.

Has Israel withdrawn its troops?

Under the terms of the agreement, Israel initially pulled its troops back behind what it called the “yellow line”.

Running around the land edges of the Strip, the poorly demarcated yellow line separates the areas of Gaza controlled by the Israeli army and those controlled by Hamas.

Hamas accuses Israel of pushing the yellow line further into Gaza “daily”, displacing those who find themselves on the wrong side and killing Palestinians, including children, approaching the unclear boundary.

Has Israel allowed aid in?

A full Israeli blockade on Gaza this year led to an engineered famine that was recognised by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) in Gaza City in August.

Since the ceasefire, Israel has allowed slightly more aid in, although far less than Gaza’s needs and what the agreement stipulated.

Aid agencies are reporting that the situation remains desperate, despite cases of malnutrition starting to slow.

UNICEF and partners in October identified nearly 9,300 children less than five with acute malnutrition, five times the level reported during a previous ceasefire in February.

“A big portion of the goods coming in is commercial [not humanitarian] – meaning that big aid agencies, including UNRWA, aren’t getting there,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for Gaza’s principal aid agency, UNRWA.

Is Israel really committed to this ceasefire?

Considering Israel’s past actions – including unilaterally breaking a ceasefire earlier this year and Netanyahu saying the war isn’t over – it is uncertain.

According to many Netanyahu critics, much of the genocide Israel unleashed on Gaza has been shaped by his own political circumstances.

But that makes him more reliant on the Trump administration, which supports the ceasefire, to protect him.

“Israel has never had a leader in a weaker position, so the US will never have a better chance of pushing their deal through,” Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, said, listing the threats to the PM that Trump’s support might save him from.

Netanyahu has petitioned Israel’s President Isaac Herzog to grant him a pardon in his ongoing corruption trial. Trump has also asked Herzog to pardon Netanyahu.

Netanyahu can also use Trump as an excuse if his far-right government members are angered by an end to the war on Gaza.

“Netanyahu can always shrug and say, ‘it’s not me, it’s Trump,’” Mekelberg said.

What’s planned for phase two?

Phase two of the deal concerns Gaza’s post-war governance. The most detailed framework so far has been the US-backed plan, now endorsed in part by the UNSC.

The plan sets out a transitional phase in which Palestinian technocrats – not political factions – would run day-to-day governance.

Their work would be overseen by a multinational “Board of Peace”, and supported by an International Stabilisation Force tasked with security and demilitarisation. This is meant to allow for the reconstruction of Gaza and stop a return to armed conflict.

But Hamas and other Palestinian groups have rejected the idea of foreign guardianship over Gaza.

They were also opposed to the UNSC resolution, saying it “paves the way for field arrangements imposed outside the Palestinian national will”.

So, could a final deal be likely?

Other than the still escalating death toll in Gaza, nothing is certain.

Netanyahu, according to his critics, is an opportunist to his core, who is still balancing several competing threats at home.

Meanwhile, Trump and his inexperienced political negotiators drawn from outside of the US’s diplomatic core find themselves negotiating a settlement to both the genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine.

And, whatever deal is agreed upon, Israel is almost certain to continue to attack Gaza whenever it likes, much as it does in the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere in the region.

A Palestinian state also does not look any closer to fruition.

Mekelberg points out that with so many potentially shifting factors, including Israel’s domestic politics, it is hard to know if a final deal is achievable.

“It’s Netanyahu,” Mekelberg said.

“His corruption cuts through everything, from his legitimisation of the far-right at home to the way he’s approached the conscription of the ultra-Orthodox [Jews in the Israeli military]. It’s too messy. There are no lines through.