The recently announced decision to raise electricity prices by the Ministry of Energy was nothing less than an explicit declaration of moving in the exact opposite direction of the interests of Syrians. It is a continuation of a methodology that facts have repeatedly proven leads only to ruin: raising prices before genuinely raising wages, and burdening the poor with the cost of what has been destroyed by flawed policies accumulated over decades, which continue today.

The Syrian people are a single, integrated political unit and cannot be defined as merely a sum of ethnicities, religions, sects, and tribes. This integrated unity contains a contradiction between the plunderers and the plundered: the plunderers, who do not exceed 10% of the population and belong to all ethnicities, religions, sects, and tribes; and the plundered, who are more than 90% of the population and likewise belong to all ethnicities, religions, sects, and tribes.

The past ten months — specifically after the transitional president Ahmad Al-Shar’a’s visit to Russia on Wednesday, October 15 — make it possible to objectively assess of the American role in Syria. Despite the “sweet talk” and repeated promises, US policy toward Syria has been clearly working against Syrian interests, and there has been no genuine intent among American decision-makers to give Syria a serious chance to get out of the quagmire in which the Americans themselves were openly a party to creating.

Shortly after “Al-Aqsa Flood” Operation on 7 October 2023, and the start of the Zionist’s brutal genocidal war against the Palestinian people, Kassioun wrote in its editorial 1154 on 24 December 2023, titled “Beyond Gaza”, the following: “Perhaps the most important conclusion that can be confirmed regarding the American management of the battle is that the required battle goes far beyond the borders of the Gaza Strip and the borders of Palestine. The slogans ‘NO to expanding the war’ in parallel with ‘NO to a ceasefire’ are precisely intended to prevent a direct war between the Zionist entity and several countries in the region, in exchange for the need to expand the war in the form of comprehensive chaos that includes the entire region”.

About a week ago, Trump presented a “new proposal” containing 20 points to end the war on Gaza. Arab states accepted it before Netanyahu introduced amendments thereto. Hamas responded with a shrewd diplomatic reply that neither rejected nor accepted it, leaving the door open for negotiations and a possible agreement.

The last Kassioun editorial, titled “He Who Perseveres Wins... He Who Gives Up Will Be Defeated”, addressed the recent talk of a forthcoming “security agreement” with “Israel”. This talk intensified over the past week, coinciding with the UN General Assembly meetings, part of which were attended by the Syrian president. Multiple media sources, mostly Western and mostly “Israeli” in their orientation, confirmed that the agreement would be signed in New York or Washington, would include major concessions from the Syrian side, and that a Trump-sponsored meeting would be held between the “Israeli” occupation’s prime minister and the transitional Syrian president on the 29th of this month.

Official and journalistic sources, both Syrian and non-Syrian, are talking about the possibility of a US-sponsored “security agreement” with the “Israeli” entity soon. The discussions include various details about the nature of the supposed agreement. Regardless of the veracity of the rumors, what these discussions all have in common is that they all involve Syrian concessions and concessions to the occupier in exchange for “some sort of” security or non-security “guarantees”, as well as talk of lifting US sanctions, which have yet to be lifted despite all the hype surrounding their eventual lifting.

During the last week, two significant events have taken center stage for our entire region, in terms of their weight and impact on the various equations governing the conflict, including those that directly affect us in Syria.

In Tianjin, China, representatives from half the world gathered, and the leaders of the Eurasian countries, who today constitute the true center of the world and contribute at least a third of the global gross domestic product, stood on one platform. This summit could have been like its predecessors, but through the military parade that followed the summit, China presented itself as a military umbrella for the summit and its outcomes. It revealed a sophisticated military structure funded with a budget equivalent to a quarter of the US military budget, and made the US army appear as if it belonged to a previous era. This parade was further enhanced by the presence of both the Russian and North Korean presidents alongside the Chinese president in a rare and unprecedented moment, resembling the announcement of a tripartite alliance.

The UN Security Council’s presidential statement on August 10 – along with a series of diplomatic statements by member states – brought back UNSC Resolution 2254 to the spotlight as the roadmap for a political solution in Syria.