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Syrian President Bashar Assad was said to have ordered Palestinian allies to attack Israel.
On May 10, Assad’s leading Palestinian ally, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, said it was organizing attacks on Israeli positions in the Golan. PFLP-GC, sponsored by Damascus and financed by Iran, said it was recruiting Palestinians for combat missions.
“The leadership of the PFLP-GC announces that it will form brigades to work on liberating all violated territories, first and foremost the occupied Golan,” PFLP-GC said. “The Popular Front’s leaders have opened the door to all Syrian citizens to volunteer in the formation of the resistance.”
During the two-year civil war, PFLP-GC was used to counter rebel operations in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. The group, headed by a Syrian Army captain, also recruited Palestinians to fight for the Assad regime in the south and center of the country.
The PFLP-GC statement came after Assad himself pledged to renew the war against Israel in the Golan. The Iranian proxy, Hizbullah, which coordinates with the Palestinian militia, said it would join the effort.
“We announce that we stand with the Syrian popular resistance and offer material and spiritual support as well as coordination in order to liberate the Syrian Golan,” Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah said on May 9.
Assad has also tried to recruit fighters from the Palestinian movement Fatah. The head of Fatah in Lebanon, Fathi Abu Al Aradat, said his members were prepared to join a war on the Golan.
“We are fighting the Zionist regime and its aggression,” Al Aradat told a Palestinian conference in Teheran. “Since Syria is an Arab country, defending it is a national, moral, ethnic, Arab and humanitarian obligation.”
