[IsraelTimes] Students return to classrooms in Syria as the country’s new rulers order schools to reopen in a potent sign of some normalcy a week after rebels swept into the capital in the dramatic overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad.The country’s new de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, faces a massive challenge to rebuild Syria after 13 years of civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Cities were bombed to ruins, the economy was gutted by international sanctions and millions of refugees still live in camps outside Syria.
Officials say most schools were opening around the country today, the first day of the working week. However some parents were not sending their children to class due to uncertainty over the situation.
Pupils waited cheerfully in the courtyard of a boys’ high school in Damascus and applauded as the school secretary, Raed Nasser, hung the flag adopted by the new authorities.
“Everything is good. We are fully equipped. We worked two, three days in order to equip the school with the needed services for the students’ safe return to school,” Nasser says, adding the Jawdat al-Hashemi school had not been damaged.
In one classroom, a student pasted the new flag on a wall.
“I am optimistic and very happy,” says student Salah al-Din Diab. “I used to walk in the street scared that I would get drafted to military service. I used to be afraid when I reach a checkpoint.”
HTS said to demand disarmament of Syria’s Palestinian factions
[IsraelTimes] Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
(HTS), the Islamist rebel group that spearheaded the insurgency that toppled Syrian president Bashir al-Assad, has reportedly ordered Paleostinian terror factions in Syria to lay down their weapons, close their training camps and dissolve their military formations.
"We'd rather die!"
"Your choice, bub."
According to a report published in the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese daily al-Akhbar on Friday, HTS has informed the Paleostinian factions, chiefly among them Hamas
..always the voice of sweet reason..., the Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Paleostine, headquartered in Damascus, that they will be able to retain their charities and conduct political activities under the aegis of the Syrian state, but will not be allowed to use Syria as a base or a point of passage for military actions against Israel.
HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani, a former al-Qaeda member, has sought to rebrand himself and his group as a moderate force that will stabilize Syria and respect religious minorities, and has indicated that he will not seek military confrontation with Israel.
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