Syria's rebel factions will be "disbanded," the head of the group that led the ouster of Bashar al-Assad has pledged, as the former president denounced the country's new rulers as "terrorists".

Assad fled Syria on December 8, as rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) captured the capital Damascus, ending decades of brutal dictatorship and years of civil war.

The drive winds between manicured lavender-lined lawns to a crescent-shaped home with a gleaming swimming pool on the Syrian coast: Bashar al-Assad's holiday hideaway disgusts those who now come here.

"To think that he spent all that money and we lived in misery," spat Mudar Ghanem, 26.

He is grey-skinned and his eyes are sunken after spending 36 days in a Damascus jail, accused like other suspected dissidents of "terrorism" against the ousted president's rule.

Ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's vast network of prisons was not simply a tool of his brutal crackdown on opposition to his rule, it was a money-making machine for his supporters.

Desperate Syrians, clinging to the dream of seeing missing sons, husbands and sisters again, say they were systematically shaken down for bribes that together amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sean McGovern, a top lieutenant of the Kinahan cartel, and Faissal Taghi -- son of the infamous head of the Dutch-Moroccan Mocro Maffia -- used to hang out and party in Dubai's glitzy hotels and restaurants without a care in the world.

Until their arrests -- and the smashing of a massive Russian-run money laundering operation based there this month -- the Gulf emirate was a haven for some of Europe's biggest drug traffickers.

In the Libyan countryside, farmer Ismail Ben Saoud has launched an agricultural experiment, banking on Mejhoul dates -- a premium variety cherished across the Arab world but untested in such a humid coastal climate.

Ben Saoud's five-hectare (12-acre) farm in Misrata, western Libya, stands out in the landscape that is dotted by olive and citrus trees.

Eight years after taking the leap, he says his 700 palm trees now produce high-quality Mejhoul dates which he hopes will reach international markets soon.

The Israeli government approved on Sunday a plan to increase the population of the annexed Golan Heights, while insisting it had no intention of confronting Syria after seizing a UN-monitored buffer zone.

As Islamist-led rebel forces swept Syrian president Bashar al-Assad out of power last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered troops to seize the demilitarised zone between the two countries' forces on the Golan Heights.

On Sunday, his office said the government approved a plan to double the population on the Israeli-held Golan Heights.

Residents of Qusayr in central Syria are finally returning home after the departure of Hezbollah fighters, who helped Bashar al-Assad's forces seize the city a decade ago and left with his fall.

Many of the houses are now in ruins, after years under the control of the Lebanese armed group, a key Assad ally which had set up a military base and training camp there.

"Most areas in the city of Qusayr were off-limits to us," said 22-year-old resident Ali Khleif.

"Even the local residents who owned shops and establishments there were prohibited from entering."

The Baath party, once a powerful symbol of Arab nationalism, has become a fading relic of authoritarian rule in the Middle East after the fall of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, analysts told AFP on Sunday.

The party has suspended its activities in Syria after Islamist-led rebel forces toppled Assad's government last week, 20 years after its rival twin branch in Iraq was banned, marking the final collapse of a movement that once held sweeping power in both countries.

Syrian rebel leader Riad al-Asaad told AFP on Sunday he was confident that the myriad of factions which helped topple Bashar al-Assad after years of war will now unite as one force.

Asaad, a former colonel, defected from the Syrian air force in July 2011, early in the Assad government's crackdown of democracy protests that spiralled into civil war.

He went on to found the Free Syrian Army (FSA), one of the main opposition factions during the 13-year war, and lost a leg in March 2013 in a bomb attack on his car in eastern Syria.

Hundreds of students at Damascus University trampled on a statue of one of Syria's former rulers on Sunday, expressing jubilation as they returned to class a week after rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad.

"The atmosphere is extraordinary. Everyone is happy -- look at how joyful people are," said medical student Rinad Abdallah, 18.

In front of her stood a large statue of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria after seizing power in a bloodless military coup in 1970, vandalised and brought to the ground.