Palestinian refugees in Syria are subject to barrel bombs and starvation... Here is an interesting perspective on the situation in Yarmouk. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/12/refugees-yarmouk-israel-palestinians-arab-isis Palestinian refugees are being starved, bombed and gunned down like animals. If you want to feed your children, you need to take your funeral shroud with you, one told Israeli news website Ynet. There are snipers on every street, you are not safe anywhere. This isnt happening, however, in southern Lebanon, or even Gaza. And these particular Palestinians arent being killed or maimed by Israeli bombs and bullets. This is Yarmouk, a refugee camp on the edge of Damascus, just a few miles from the palace of Bashar al-Assad. Since 1 April, the camp has been overrun by Islamic State militants, who have begun a reign of terror: detentions, shootings, beheadings and the rest. Hundreds of refugees are believed to have been killed in what Ban Ki-moon has called the deepest circle of hell. But this isnt just about the depravity of Isis. The Palestinians of Yarmouk have been bombarded and besieged by Assads security forces since 2012. Water and electricity were cut off long ago, and of the 160,000 Palestinian refugees who once lived in the camp only 18,000 now remain. The Syrian regime has, according to Amnesty International, been committing war crimes by using starvation of civilians as a weapon, forcing residents to resort to eating cats and dogs. Even as the throat-slitters took control, Assads pilots were continuing to drop barrel bombs on the refugees. The sky of Yarmouk has barrel bombs instead of stars, said Abdallah al-Khateeb, a political activist living inside the camp. It is difficult to disagree with the verdict of the Palestinian League for Human Rights that the Palestinians of Syria are the most untold story in the Syrian conflict. There are 12 official Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, housing more than half a million people. Ninety per cent, estimates the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), are in continuous need of humanitarian aid. In Yarmouk, throughout 2014, residents were forced to live on around 400 calories of food aid a day fewer than a fifth of the UNs recommended daily amount of 2,100 calories for civilians in war zones because UNRWA aid workers had only limited access to the camp. Today, they have zero access.To know what it is like in Yarmouk, one of the camps residents is quoted as saying on the UNRWA website, turn off your electricity, water, heating, eat once a day, live in the dark. Their plight should matter to us all regardless of whether their persecutors happen to be Israelis, Syrians, Egyptians or, for that matter, fellow Palestinians (Palestinian Authority security forces, after all, have been shooting and beating unarmed Palestinian protesters for several years now). This is far from a cynical exercise in pro-Israeli whataboutery. There are very good reasons that Israel attracts such widespread criticism and condemnation in the west. Israel is our ally and claims to be a liberal democracy, unlike both Assad and Isis. Israel is also armed, funded and protected from UN censure by the US government; again, unlike both Assad and Isis. Those who try to use the tragedy of Yarmouk to excuse or downplay Israels 48-year occupation of Palestine should be ashamed of themselves. But what of the rest of us? Can we afford to stay in our deep slumber, occasionally awakening to lavishly condemn only Israel? Lets be honest: how different, how vocal and passionate, would our reaction be if the people besieging Yarmouk were wearing the uniforms of the IDF? Our selective outrage is morally unsustainable. Many of us have raised our voices in support of the Palestinian cause have inexcusably turned a blind eye to the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed by fellow Arabs in recent decades: by the Jordanian military in the Black September conflicts of the early 1970s; by Lebanese militias in the civil war of the mid-1980s; by Kuwaiti vigilantes after the first Gulf war, in the early 1990s. Egypt, the so-called heart of the Arab world, has colluded with Israel in the latters eight-year blockade of Gaza. Meanwhile, the Palestinians of Yarmouk are living in catastrophic conditions, their lives profoundly threatened, in the words of the United Nations. So what, if anything, can be done? The usual coalition of neoconservative hawks and so-called liberal interventionists in the west want to bomb first and ask questions later, while the rest of us resort to a collective shrug: a mixture of indifference and despair. Few are willing to make the tough and unpopular case for a negotiated solution to the Syrian conflict or, at least, a truce and a ceasefire, a temporary cessation of hostilities. Yet there is an urgent need for a pause in the fighting in order to ensure humanitarian access to Yarmouk, says Chris Gunness, senior director of UNRWA, who has described the camp as a hellhole. UNRWA, he tells me, is calling on those who can influence the parties on the ground to make that influence effective, adding: Everyone in the Middle East can be influenced, everyone is sponsored. Gunness points out that almost 100 civilians, including 20 children, were evacuated from the camp on 5 April so there is no reason why more of Yarmouks residents cant be escorted to safety. We have also failed to put our money where our collective mouth is. The UNs $415m appeal for Palestinian refugees in Syria is only 20% funded, a situation Gunness calls disastrous. Isnt it a scandal that theres always spare cash for bombing campaigns yet never enough for emergency aid? The Palestinians of Yarmouk, like the Palestinians of Gaza during the summer of 2014, need our support, both political and financial. Now is the time for those of us who claim to care about the Palestinian people, and their struggle for dignity, justice and nationhood, to make our voices heard. Some 3,500 of the 18,000 Palestinians in Yarmouk are children. As Gunness says, his voice trembling with emotion: We are potentially witnessing a slaughter of the innocents. What is the world going to do? The headline of this article was amended on Monday 13 April 2015
As the West is ultimately reponsible for the unfolding tragedy; the West and the Saudis created the so called "uprising" even when Assad initially gave in to the protester's demands. IS is still funded and abetted by Western interests, including Israel, http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-...muggled-from-isis-territory-report-1001084873 So is it any surprise the West keeps silent?
Many of Yarmouk’s refugees originate from northern Palestine, the Safad District, and villages like Qaytiyya, al-Ja’ouneh and Khisas. They subsisted in that region for nearly 67 years. Unable to return to Palestine, yet hoping to do so, they named the streets of their camp, its neighborhoods, even its bakeries, pharmacies and schools, after villages from which they were once driven. SNIP Yarmouk — a refugee camp of over 200,000 inhabitants, most of whom are registered refugees with the UN agency, UNRWA — was reduced to less than 20,000. Much of the camp stood in total ruins. Hundreds of its residents either starved to death or were killed in the war. The rest fled to other parts of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe. The most natural order of things would have been the return of the refugees to Safad and villages like Qaytiyya. Yet, few made such calls, and those demands raised by Palestinians officials were dismissed by Israel as non-starters. In fact while countries like Lebanon had accepted 1.72 million refugees (one in every five people in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee), Turkey 1.93 million, Jordan 629,000, Iraq 249,000, and Egypt 132,000, Israel made no offer to accept a single refugee. http://www.juancole.com/2015/09/israels-refugee-yarmouk.html
Yarmouk refugee camp is located 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) from the center of Damascus and inside the municipal boundaries.
Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with the eruption of conflict in Syria.. Syria was suffering from a severe 4-5 year drought and long standing sectarian conflict.. Read Clean Break Strategy.. Israel has called for regime change in Syria since 1996.
