[Midden-Oosten] The erasure of Yarmouk: How the Assad regime is dismantling Syria’s hub of Palestinian life, by Leila Al Shami

[Jeff]

The erasure of Yarmouk: How the Assad regime is dismantling Syria’s hub 
of Palestinian life
August 17, 2020 by Leila Al Shami

https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2020/8/14/the-erasure-of-yarmouk-refugee-camp


Yarmouk refugee camp, on the southern outskirts of Damascus, was once 
known as the ‘capital of the Palestinian diaspora’.

Ravaged by Syria’s counter-revolutionary war, more than two years after 
the cessation of local fighting the camp still lies in ruins.

Residents who were forcibly displaced are yet to return, and a new 
reconstruction plan threatens to make their displacement permanent.

Yarmouk is one of several formally oppositional communities in which a 
series of housing, land and property laws and re-development plans are 
being used to expropriate the property of the original inhabitants and 
change demographics.

Yarmouk Camp was established in 1957 to accommodate Palestinian refugees 
who had fled the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) and ethnic cleansing of 
Palestine.

While not officially recognised as a camp, it was home to the largest 
concentration of Palestinian refugees outside their native land, and was 
a cultural, political and intellectual hub for Palestinian life in 
exile.

Over time it grew into a densely populated residential neighbourhood 
which, prior to the Syrian revolution, housed some 160,000 Palestinians 
and tens of thousands of Syrians. A bustling commercial centre, people 
from across Damascus would visit Yarmouk’s vibrant markets.

Due to their precarious status as refugees, Palestinian civil society 
and political factions in Yarmouk decided to maintain a position of 
neutrality when the revolution broke out. The camp remained relatively 
calm and provided safe haven for Syrians fleeing regime repression 
elsewhere. The turning point came on 15 May 2011.

The Syrian regime had encouraged Palestinian youths to demonstrate on 
the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to commemorate the 
Nakba. Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live bullets at demonstrators 
resulting in hundreds of injuries and 17 deaths as Syrian soldiers stood 
by without intervening and prevented ambulances from reaching the 
wounded.

Many believed that the regime had used them to deflect attention from 
the uprising. Funerals for the dead turned into the first of many 
anti-regime demonstrations.

In December 2012, MiG war planes shelled the Abdel Qadir Al-Husseini 
mosque in the heart of the camp, where internally displaced people were 
sheltering.  Dozens were killed. This resulted in the entry of 
opposition militia fighting the regime.

Palestinian factions joined both sides. Some 80 percent of the 
population fled and a partial siege was imposed by the regime and the 
loyalist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

The humanitarian situation dramatically worsened in July 2013 as a full 
siege was enforced by the regime, preventing the entry of food and 
humanitarian aid for the 18,000 civilians trapped inside. Fatwas 
(religious edicts) were issued permitting the consumption of cats and 
dogs (prohibited in Islam) to fend off starvation.

A lack of medical supplies and the regime’s destruction of medical 
facilities meant that those injured by the constant shelling, or those 
with chronic illnesses, faced a death sentence. In order to survive, 
people planted rooftop gardens. When the regime finally permitted UNRWA 
to enter in January 2014, photos of emaciated residents queuing for food 
amongst an apocalyptic wasteland of bombed-out buildings shocked the 
world.

The Syrian regime has portrayed itself as defender of the Palestinian 
cause. Yet no mercy was shown to the people of Yarmouk who were 
collectively punished for the ‘crime’ of providing shelter to the 
displaced and later joining Syria’s struggle for freedom and social 
justice.

The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) documents 1,458 
Palestinians from Yarmouk killed since 2011. This includes 496 who died 
due to shelling of the camp, 208 who died from starvation or medical 
neglect due to the siege and 215 tortured to death in the regime’s 
detention centres.

Despite the regime’s control of entry points to the camp, in April 2015 
the Islamic State (IS) captured over 60 percent of Yarmouk. It brought 
with it a new reign of terror, clamping down on civil society activists 
and independent voices and carrying out floggings and executions. At 
this point 3,000 civilians remained under IS occupation.

The regime and its allies launched an all-out assault on the camp to 
oust IS in April 2018. A month of intensive bombing left some 80 percent 
of the camp’s buildings and infrastructure destroyed.  A Russian 
sponsored deal saw IS members and their families evacuated to the desert 
east of Suweida and the remaining civilian population was forcibly 
displaced as the regime re-took control.

Just two months later, IS carried out a string of attacks in Suweida 
targeting the Druze minority population. Many believed the regime 
facilitated the assault – a cynical ploy to re-impose control over the 
province.

Following the ceasefire many families attempted to return to Yarmouk but 
were prevented. Some were permitted brief entry to inspect their homes 
after receiving security clearance and paying bribes. In the following 
days photos circulated on social media of regime-affiliated militia 
looting the property of former residents.

Rami, whose family hails from Suweida, is one of many Syrians who call 
Yarmouk home. He fled the camp in June 2018, just six days before the 
regime entered. He was devastated to see his home being looted live on 
Al-Akhbariya (Syrian state TV). “They stole everything,” he says. “Even 
my father’s extensive library. They took my telescope, the handmade 
carpet my late grandmother made. I have no single photo left from my 
childhood. These things are irreplaceable.”

Despite statements by regime officials and the leaders of Palestinian 
factions that residents will be permitted to return once the rubble is 
cleared and basic services restored, many fear their displacement is 
permanent and that the camp’s identity is being irrevocably altered.

Yarmouk, previously managed by a local committee under the Syrian 
Ministry of Local Administration, has recently been incorporated into 
Damascus Governorate, ending its unofficial status as a camp. In June a 
reconstruction plan was issued by the Damascus Governorate. Residents 
were given 30 days to prove property ownership and submit objections. 
Many residents do not possess ownership documents.

Others have lost their documents in the course of the conflict or are 
currently residing outside the country. According to Rami “even people 
who can get the paperwork don’t want to do it because they don’t trust 
the system, there’s too much risk of arrest or they can’t afford the 
expense of paying the bribes.”

Under the plan, residents from just 40 percent of the camp which 
suffered mild damage can return. The remaining 60 percent will undergo 
re-development with contracts likely awarded to those closely affiliated 
to the regime, as has happened elsewhere. No compensation or alternative 
housing is offered except for small shares for those able to prove 
ownership.

According to the AGPS, “The new plan will remarkably change the 
demographic and architectural identity of the camp. Several buildings 
and facilities will be removed, which will lead to a mass displacement 
of refugee families and a further deterioration of their humanitarian 
condition. It is believed that if the plan is implemented, over half the 
residents will not be able to return to their homes.”

Over 10,000 objections have been submitted by residents and 3,000 signed 
a petition demanding the rehabilitation of the camp and their immediate 
return, offering to carry out reconstruction work themselves.

“I lost my home once when I had to flee for my life,” Rami says. “I lost 
it again when I saw it being looted by the Syrian army live on TV … and 
here I lose it once more to this legalised usurpation of our land.”

As elsewhere ‘reconstruction’ is used as a tool to facilitate the 
transfer of property from its previous owners to corrupt 
regime-affiliated businessmen and to ensure that the population of 
‘oppositional’ communities is permanently displaced.

Yet given that Yarmouk was home to large numbers of Palestinian 
refugees, the displacement has wider implications. Prominent 
Syrian-Palestinian intellectual Salameh Kaileh argues that what happened 
in Yarmouk was a premeditated strategy to end the ‘refugee problem’ or 
the Palestinian presence in Syria, doing untold damage to the wider 
Palestinian cause.

In his view the regime facilitated the entry of weapons to drag the camp 
into the conflict, and the entry of extremist groups to serve as a 
pretext for intensive bombing and starvation siege, both to 
systematically destroy the camp and to empty it of its inhabitants. Even 
worse than regime actions, Kaileh condemns those who have defended the 
regime, and betrayed the Palestinian cause “under the illusion of 
fighting imperialism.”