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The Palestinians in Syria, the long path of pain and the outdated Assad era

January 16, 2025 at 12:40 pm

Mahmud Khaled Ajaj, 30, reacts while standing before a destroyed apartment building in the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees south of Damascus on 19 December, 2024 [ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images]

This applies to Palestinian refugees in Syria who have suffered from the injustice and tyranny of the Al-Assad regime, just like the Syrian people. Therefore, the Palestinian refugees in Syria have also participated in the Syrian Revolution since the beginning.

The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria has documented 3,085 cases of arrest by the fugitive criminal regime since the beginning of the Syrian Revolution in 2011, including 28 children and 117 women; 643 people died under torture, while only 48 people were released after the fall of the tyrant Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. Of course, young Palestinian activists there documented Palestinian detainees, the forcibly disappeared and martyrs in Syria. It is important to point out that the criminal regime of Al-Assad and the sectarian Shia militias from Iraq and other nationalities, such as the Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun militias, arrested more than 2,000 Palestinians after they fled from the south of Yarmouk Camp through the Ali Al-Wahsh area. Their fate remains unknown.

Among the young Palestinian martyrs who were tortured in the prisons of the fugitive tyrant are Ahmed Amairi, Mohammed Amairi, Yazan Arisha and Hassan Hassan. The fate of the young detainee Khaled Bakrawi remains unknown. The well-known young martyrs who were martyred in Yarmouk are Bassam Hamidi and Ahmed Taha, and the photojournalist Tariq Al-Khader was martyred in Daraa. It is worth noting that a number of officers and soldiers from the Palestine Liberation Army defected and stood by the Syrian people. I remember among them was Colonel Qahtan Tabasheh, who was martyred while defending Daraa in southern Syria and its people. There was also First Lieutenant Iyas Naimi, who was martyred defending the Yarmouk Camp and its people.

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The horrific Tadamon massacre committed by the intelligence officer of the defunct Al-Assad regime on 16 April, 2013 (the fugitive criminal Amjad Yousef and his group) is considered a major indicator of the extent of crimes committed against the Syrian and Palestinian peoples. Among the victims of the massacre is Wassim Siam, a resident of the Yarmouk Camp on the well-known Al-Ja’ouneh Street in the middle of the camp. He is the son of the dear brother and friend Omar Siam, who is currently in Germany, along with his family and the family of his martyred son.

Most of the massacre’s martyrs were Palestinians from the Yarmouk and Tadamon areas east of Yarmouk. The entire family of Umm Ziad Amairi from Yarmouk was arrested during this. The total number of family members killed reached 90, most of whom were children. It is believed that they were executed in Tadamon and other areas in the region. I met the eldest son, Ziad, in 2014 in Lebanon, and he had wished for their deaths for fear of them being raped.

The refugees in Syria have become part of the Syrian social fabric, carrying in their movements and travels the dreams of return that have never left them. Most of the Palestinian camps in Syria have witnessed bombing and complete or partial destruction at the hands of the Al-Assad regime army, which is fleeing justice. This led to the destruction of large parts of the Palestinian camps and the displacement of about 250,000 Palestinians to several Western countries: Turkiye, Canada and Brazil. In addition to this was the internal displacement that affected tens of thousands, especially to the Sahnaya area and others. The major wave of displacement occurred after a MiG jet belonging to Al-Assad’s criminal regime bombed the Abdul Qadir Al-Husayni Mosque in the centre of Yarmouk Camp on Sunday, 16 December, 2012, at exactly 12:45 pm. As a result of that operation, 185 worshippers and displaced persons were martyred inside the mosque. This day was considered a turning point in the Palestinian situation in Syria.

The total number of Palestinian refugees residing in Syria at the end of 2012 was estimated at 560,000. As for their geographical distribution, the data collected by the Syrian statistical groups indicate that 67 per cent of the total number of refugees are concentrated in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and the camps located in its suburbs, while the remaining 33 per cent are spread across the other governorates. In general, about 30 per cent of the total number of refugees in Syria are concentrated in nine refugee camps recognised by The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Syria, and it rises to 60 per cent if we count Palestinian refugees residing in Yarmouk Camp.

These figures do not include the number of Palestinian Arabs who came to Syria in 1967 and 1970, as they are not registered in UNRWA records in Syria. Hence, the actual number of Palestinian refugees in Syria is higher.

It goes without saying that the Palestinian people, in general, and the Palestinians of Syria, in particular, were overjoyed by the Syrian people overthrowing the Al-Assad regime, especially since the Palestinian refugees suffered, as did the Syrian people, from injustice and tyranny during the criminal Al-Assad era that lasted more than five decades. It is a well-known fact that the law regulating the lives of Palestinians in Syria in terms of their rights and duties, known as Law 260, was issued in 1956 before Hafez Al-Assad seized power in 1970.

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He supported and adopted the split from the Fatah movement, the largest Palestinian faction, in 1983 and did not stop there. His security forces went further than that, arresting thousands of the movement’s members and throwing them into the toughest prisons and dungeons, which the entire world saw after the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime.

These individuals spent many long years behind bars with great suffering. Among them were our brothers Dr Samir Al-Rifai, the current Palestinian ambassador to Damascus, the late Hosni Hamdan Abu Imad, Mustafa Al-Khoury Abu Mahmoud, Badi Hamzat, Haitham Shamloni, Alaa Al-Sabaa and Abu Taan.

May God have mercy on them. The list goes on.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Quds Al-Arabi on 13 January 2025. The title of this article is inspired by The Path of Pains Trilogy by the late Russian writer and author Aleksey Tolstoy.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.