12 August 2012 By Khalid Amayreh
Increasingly, Palestinian groups in Syria are finding
neutrality a difficult position to keep, especially
when some are funded by Iran, Al-Assad's regional
ally, writes Khaled Amayreh
Palestinians reacted
angrily but helplessly to the killing last week of as
many as 21 Palestinians, ostensibly at the hands of
the Syrian army at the Yarmouk Refugee Camp in
Damascus.
According to the director
of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and other
eyewitnesses, Bashar Al-Assad regime forces shelled
the densely populated refugee camp with mortar fire
around sunset Thursday, when refugees had just broken
their day-long Ramadan fast.
At least two shells
landed in Jauna Street in the middle of the camp,
killing 21 and injuring more than 60 others.
Eyewitnesses said the
second shell caused most of the casualties as refugees
gathered to rescue occupants of a house hit by the
first shell.
The Yarmouk camp is
located not far from the Tadamun neighbourhood, where
intensive fighting was taking place between regime
forces and the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the military
arm of the Syrian revolution.
Palestinians in Syria and
elsewhere, including the Palestinian Authority (PA)
and Hamas maintained strict neutrality between the
regime and the opposition. However, this neutrality
didn't assuage the regime's suspicions that the
refugees, or many of them, had their hearts decidedly
with the FSA and the opposition in general.
The fact that virtually
all Palestinian refugees are Sunni Muslims reinforced
these suspicions on the part of the regime, especially
after some Palestinian factions, such as Hamas, more
or less ended their presence in Syria.
A high-ranking Hamas
official was found dead in Damascus a few weeks ago
amid strong speculations that agents of the Alawite
regime may have been responsible for the mysterious
murder.
A few months ago, a bus
carrying two dozen cadets of the Palestinian
Liberation Army (the Syrian Region) were abducted and
summarily executed or decapitated at the hands of the
so-called Shabbiha forces working for the Al-Assad
regime.
Predictably, the regime
denied responsibility for the killings, insisting that
"armed thugs" committed the atrocities.
However, most
Palestinians in Syria and occupied Palestine don't
take seriously the regime's denials, knowing that a
regime that doesn't hesitate to murder, even en masse,
and its own citizens will not spare the Palestinians.
The Syrian regime defends
the bloody repression of the mostly-Sunni opposition,
arguing that its rule is being targeted by an
international conspiracy due to its supposed
uncompromising stance on Israel and the United States
as well as its support for the Palestinian cause and
Hizbullah.
The opposition, however,
accuses the regime of using the Palestinian issue as a
"red herring" to keep the small and esoteric Alawite
sect in power. The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia
Islam and is considered by many Muslims as heretical.
Eager to protect
Palestinian refugees in Syria, who number around
450,000, Palestinian officials repeatedly appealed to
"all Syrian parties" to leave the Palestinians alone.
"Our people are guests of
the Syrian people and government and take no sides in
the current crisis. We therefore appeal to the warring
sides in Syria to respect the neutrality of our
people," said Palestinian Authority (PA) leader
Mahmoud Abbas.
Similar statements have
also been issued by Hamas leaders, including Khaled
Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh.
Palestinian leaders and
factions are worried, though, that upsetting the
Syrian regime could endanger the security and safety
of the refugees.
This is the argument
voiced privately by Ahmed Jebril, head of the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General
Command), who is based in the Yarmouk Refugee Camp.
The Iranian-funded group
is widely detested by Palestinian refugees for siding
with the repressive regime in Damascus and also for
alienating the majority Sunni population who have come
to view some refugees as cheap mercenaries working for
the Syrian regime.
But Jebril believes that
his fate is inextricably linked with that of President
Al-Assad, a view angrily rejected by others within the
group.
This week, his opponents
urged him to leave the group and choose between
loyalty to Palestine and loyalty to Bashar Al-Assad.
The choice is not easy.
If Jebril abandoned Al-Assad, he could lose
everything, including his own life.
Hamas has quietly scaled
down its presence in Damascus, with most of the
group's top leaders leaving for Qatar and Egypt.
The move gave the
Islamist group more freedom to be in harmony with the
general mood in the occupied territories where the
Palestinian public in both the West Bank and Gaza is
decidedly supportive of the revolution and vehemently
opposed to the Alawite regime.
In recent months and
weeks, Islamist preachers began giving sermons on the
need to identify with and support the Syrian
revolution.
Moreover, homilies have
been given in mosques educating worshipers on the
"heretical nature" of Al-Assad's Alawite sect, which
has dominated the political scene in Syria for the
past 45 years.
On Friday, a preacher at
Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem called the Syrian regime
"murderous, evil and godless".
"The regime of Bashar Al-Assad
is the enemy of Muslims, the enemy of humanity and the
enemy of God. We pray to the Almighty to speed up
victory over this criminal regime."
Another preacher in
Hebron described the regime as "much worse than
Israel".
"We have been living
under the Israeli occupation for many years, but we
haven't witnessed the kind of things we watch on TV,"
said the preacher, alluding to the gruesome images of
death and destruction in Syria.
Similarly, Hamas's media
outlets, including radio and TV, have markedly changed
their tune in favour of the Syrian revolution.
Hamas is the ideological
daughter of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, the
ultimate anathema for the Al-Assad regime and one of
the main revolutionary groups fighting to topple the
regime.
The Al-Assad regime calls
the Muslim Brothers Ikhwan Al-Shayatin or "the
brothers of Satan" and considers them the ultimate
enemy.
Given the fact that the
bulk of Hamas's constituencies are conservative
religious Muslims, Hamas has probably come to realise
that maintaining strict neutrality between the
Damascus regime and its Sunni opponents is beyond its
ability. Hence, the new tone.
This is not the same with
the Islamic Jihad group, which depends on Iran, Al-Assad's
regional ally, for its financial survival. The
relatively small group has said it is maintaining its
presence in Damascus and has no plans to leave.
Nonetheless, the group is avoiding making comment on,
or giving its reactions to, the Syrian crisis, likely
to avoid upsetting the various sides in the situation,
including the Palestinians themselves. Khalid Amayreh is an American-educated
journalist living in the southern West Bank town of
Dura near Hebron. He graduated from the University of
Oklahoma in Norman in 1981. He also, received a Master
degree in Journalism from the University of Southern
Illinois at Carbondale in 1983. Comments 💬 التعليقات |
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