My missing family in Syria: Naming and shaming in Yarmouk

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Members of my family in Syria's Yarmouk went missing many months ago. We haven't an idea who is dead and who is alive. Unlike my other uncle and his children in Libya, who fled the NATO war and turned up alive but hiding in some desert a few months later, my uncle's family in Syria disappeared completely as if ingested by a black hole, to a whole different dimension.

I chose the "black hole" analogy, as opposed to the one used by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon -- "the deepest circle of hell" -- which he recently uttered in reference to the plight of Palestinians in Yarmouk following the advances made by the notorious Islamic State (IS) militias in early April. If there is any justice in the hereafter, no Palestinian refugee -- even those who failed to pray five times a day or go to church every Sunday -- deserves to be in any "circle of hell," deep or shallow. The suffering they have endured in this world since the founding of Israel atop their towns and villages in Palestine some 66 years ago is enough to redeem their collective sins, past and present.

For now, however, justice remains elusive. The refugees of Yarmouk -- whose population once exceeded 250,000, dwindling throughout the Syrian civil war to 18,000 -- is a microcosm of the story of a whole nation, whose perpetual pain shames us all, none excluded.

Palestinian refugees (some displaced several times) who escaped the Syrian war to Lebanon, Jordan or are displaced in Syria itself, are experiencing the cruel reality under the harsh and inhospitable terrains of war and Arab regimes. Many of those who remained in Yarmouk were torn to shreds by the barrel bombs of the Syrian army, or victimized -- and now beheaded -- by the malicious, violent groupings that control the camp, including the al-Nusra Front, and as of late, IS.

Those who have somehow managed to escape bodily injury are starving. The starvation in Yarmouk is also the responsibility of all parties involved, and the "inhumane conditions" under which they subsist -- especially since December 2012 -- is a badge of shame on the forehead of the international community in general, and the Arab League in particular.

These are some of the culprits in the suffering of Yarmouk:

Israel

Israel bears direct responsibility in the plight of the refugees in Yarmouk, as they do the five million other refugees across the Middle East. The refugees of Yarmouk are mostly the descendants of Palestinian refugees from historic Palestine, especially the northern towns, including Safad, which is now inside Israel. The camp was established in 1957, nearly a decade after the Nakba -- "Catastrophe" of 1948, which saw the expulsion of nearly a million refugees from Palestine. It was meant to be a temporary shelter, but it became a permanent home. Its residents never abandoned their right of return to Palestine, a right enshrined in UN resolution 194.

Israel knows that the memory of the refugees is its greatest enemy, so when the Palestinian leadership requested that Israel allow the Yarmouk refugees to move to the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a condition: that they renounce their right of return. Palestinians refused. The refugees would have refused. History has shown that Palestinians would endure untold suffering and not abandon their rights in Palestine. The fact that Netanyahu would place such a condition is not just a testimony to Israel's fear of Palestinian memory, but the political opportunism and sheer ruthlessness of the Israeli government.

The Palestinian Authority (PA)

The PA was established in 1994 based on a clear charter where a small group of Palestinians "returned" to the occupied territories, set up a few institutions and siphoned billions of dollars in international aid, in exchange for abandoning the right or return for Palestinian refugees, and ceding any claim on real Palestinian sovereignty and nationhood. The Palestinian nation became whatever Palestine's political elite wished it to be. The new "Palestine" had no definable boundaries, excluded the diaspora community and millions of refugees, saw Palestinians in Israel as an internal Israeli matter, split the West Bank and Gaza, and had no patience for any democratic endeavor.

Not only had it completely abandoned the refugees, save of few passing references, the PA left Lebanon's half-million refugees to fend for themselves, locked in refugee camps that were not allowed to grow or develop, with no voice or political representation.

When the civil war in Syria began to quickly engulf the refugees, and although such a reality was to be expected, President Mahmoud Abbas's authority did so little as if the matter was of no importance or had no bearing on the Palestinian people as a whole. True, Abbas made a few statements calling on Syrians to spare the refugees what was essentially a Syrian struggle, but not much more. When IS took over the camp, Abbas dispatched his labour minister, Ahmad Majdalani to Syria. The latter made a statement that the factions and the Syrian regime would unite against IS -- which, if true, is likely to ensure the demise of hundreds more.

If Abbas had invested 10 percent of the energy he spent in his "government's" media battle against Hamas or a tiny share of his investment in the frivolous "peace process," he could have at least garnered the needed international attention and backing to treat the plight of Palestinian refugees in Syria's Yarmouk with a degree of urgency. Instead, they were left to die alone, as the PA remained safe in its Ramallah bubble, unhindered by the cries of orphans, widows and bleeding men.

The Syrian regime

When rebels seized Yarmouk in December 2012, President Bashar al-Assad's forces shelled the camp without mercy while Syrian media never ceased to speak about liberating Jerusalem. The contradictions between words and deeds when it comes to Palestine is an Arab syndrome that has afflicted every single Arab government and ruler since Palestine became the "Palestine question" and the Palestinians became the "refugee problem."

Syria is no exception, but Assad, like his father Hafez before him, is particularly savvy in utilizing Palestine as a rallying cry aimed solely at legitimizing his regime while posing as if a revolutionary force fighting colonialism and imperialism. Palestinians will never forget the siege and massacre of Tel al-Zaatar (where Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were besieged, butchered but also starved as a result of a siege and massacre carried out by right-wing Lebanese militias and the Syrian army in 1976), as they will not forget or forgive what is taking place in Yarmouk today.