The Syrian Regime Is Responsible for the Crisis in Yarmouk & No One Is Talking About It

By merely focusing on the humanitarian crisis, mainstream reporting on Yarmouk has failed to highlight the Syrian regime’s role in facilitating the crisis in the Palestinian refugee camp.

Residents of Yarmouk demonstrate following an attack on the camp (Photo Credit: Jordi Bernabeu Farrús) (February, 2014)

by Celine Cantat

I used to live in Yarmouk. It is Syria’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, home to about 150,000 Palestinians as well as hundreds of thousands of impoverished Syrians and Iraqi refugees. It lies a few kilometers south of Damascus and, until recently, was one of the centers of intellectual and cultural life in the Palestinian diaspora.

As all those who once walked its lively streets and remember its myriad sounds and smells, I am now haunted by images of its ravaged buildings, children feeding themselves on grass and stray cats, and scrawny bodies starved to death. Since July 2013, an estimated 200 people have died, and many others have been left without food or medication, leading to escalating incidents of starvation. This is in addition to the approximately 300 Palestinians killed under torture in the regime’s prisons, and the 900 who have died from shelling in the camp. There has been no drinkable water in Yarmouk for over one year and a half.