Many of the Syrians who attended this week's National Dialogue conference in the Syrian capital Damascus had never imagined they would be able to enter the building in which it was held.

"Honestly, it's an indescribable feeling," said Ammar Alzeer, a photographer from the coastal city of Baniyas, who had been invited to discuss media freedoms at the one-day conference set up to work on guidelines for a new Syrian government. "For a while, I couldn't believe that we were in the People's Palace. That's its name but we knew it was really the palace of [Syria's former dictator] Bashar Assad. Now we feel that this place is truly ours."

"The fact that the Syrian people are in the same palace where Bashar Assad used to live is cause for optimism in itself," adds Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, senior policy advisor for Citizens for Secure America, or C4SSA, a Syrian advocacy group based in Washington. "Both yesterday and today. I've seen amazing diversity within this conference: Men and women, young and old, people from different walks of life, different religions, Muslim, Christian, Druze, you name it. Yes, there are people missing who should be here. But the Syrian people are finally in the 'People's Palace' and that's very positive."

In mid-February, Syria's foreign minister announced that a new, more representative government would be chosen in early March. The small interim government currently running the country was chosen by rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which led the December assault that ousted Assad's regime. HTS was formerly affiliated with extremist groups like al-Qaeda but since it took over the Syrian government, HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, now the country's president,

© Deutsche Welle