How has the Palestinian experience been described in contemporary Syrian literature? Since the late-1960s, Ali al-Uqlat Arslan, a Syrian writer supported ideologically by the Ba’thist regime, has demonized the “Zionist entity” and advocated “struggle” or “martyrdom” for the Palestinian cause. However, at the same time, he has not accepted the independent position of the Palestinian liberation movement, as initiated by the Palestinians themselves. His drama Palestinian women made exaggerated references to “Arab liberation”, the “Arab-Israel conflict” and even “the third world revolution”. For his part, during the era of the first Intifada, Saadallah Wanus, a prominent Syrian dramatist possessing considerable insight into the reality of Syrian politics, unmasked the deceptions of the official discourse of “Arab nationalism”. In his famous work Rape, Wanus emphasized that the Arab regimes, including the Assad regime, were nothing but a replica of the “Zionist entity”, relying upon occupation and oppression. As such, their citizens, whether Palestinian or Syrian, were little more than victims of these Arab regimes’ merciless power politics. Despite their differences, there is one major similarity between Arslan and Wanus, in that their writings on “the question of Palestine” are written from the viewpoint of Syrians, and directed at a largely Syrian audience. However, especially since the 2000s, Palestinian writers who were born and grew up in Syria, such as May Jalili, have developed their own literature, based on the memory of their lives in Palestinian camps or neighborhoods in Syria. In doing so, they have afforded readers a new perspective on Syrian-Palestinian identities. In this context, Ali al-Kurdi published his novel Shamaaya Castle, which dealt with his memories of his childhood in the former Jewish quarter of Damascus during the 1950s and 1960s. Depending on his own self-consciousness, rather than old-fashioned ideological discourses, the author presented the Syrian-Palestinian reality of co-existence and shared humanity, in a country characterized by the rich histories and cultures of diverse religious communities. It is well known that the Syrian people have sympathized with the Palestinian cause and that the Syrian government has frequently mouthed assent to such slogans while there have been various internal political conflicts, and social discrimination against Palestinians living in Syria. However, little research has been done into the description of Palestinian experience in Syrian fiction. In this presentation, I would like to focus, historically and sociologically, on the depiction of “Palestine” in contemporary Syrian literature, from both human and ideological angles.