A New Palestinian Community?

This report represents the first-ever dedicated study in English of Palestinian-Syrian politics and community dynamics since the beginning of the 2011 Syrian uprising until the present day. It investigates how the Syrian uprising, and the conflict that followed, played out in Palestinian-Syrian communities and how Palestinians themselves participated in events after the first major protests broke out in Daraa in March 2011.

The authors were motivated to write this report based on the belief that, for too long, there has been too little focus on how the Syrian crisis has impacted the roughly 560,000 Palestinian refugees who were residing in Syria on the eve of the 2011 uprising. Contextualizing Palestinian experiences of the Syrian uprising through a history of the uprising itself, this report melds together two histories. Rather than talking about Syria’s Palestinian community as something separate from the Syrian body politic, or as a homogenous, dehumanized entity merely talked about in terms of being “pro-regime” or “pro-opposition,” here the authors have sought to return agency to Palestinian-Syrian communities.

This study is available in English and Arabic, both as a PDF and in print. Order a printed copy of the Arabic version here.

English PDF  Arabic PDF