Syrian conflict makes Palestinians into both refugees and combatants

Omar Hassan was just three years old when he and his family were forced to leave their home in northern Palestine during the creation of Israel, making a home as stateless refugees in a camp in Syria. Now, six decades on, Mr. Hassan is on the move again, fleeing the violence that has engulfed his neighborhood in Sitt Zeynab outside Damascus for the cramped but peaceful conditions of the Bourj ash-Shemali Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon.

“In Sitt Zeynab, we had no problems until two months ago, then life became unbearable with a lot of shelling and fighting,” says Hassan, an employee of an airline company in Syria. “Bombs were falling just 150 meters from my home.”

Hassan's plight illustrates how the estimated 500,000 Palestinian refugees living in Syria and the various political factions that represent them have been sucked into the vortex of Syria’s 18-month war – and how they have responded in different ways.

A tragic history

Hamas, a Sunni militant Islamist movement with links to the Muslim Brotherhood, has cautiously distanced itself from the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, previously a core ally. Although Hamas still keeps an office in Damascus, Khaled Meshaal, the head of the movement’s politburo, abandoned the Syrian capital in January for Qatar, a chief backer of the Syrian opposition to the Assad regime.

On the other hand, the Assad regime continues to enjoy the support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a faction that has long been backed by Damascus and whose militants are fighting alongside government forces and the loyalist Shabiha militia.

But most Palestinians remain wary of taking sides in a conflict that has left 23,000 people dead since March last year, according to activists, and looks set to worsen even further in the months ahead.

The Palestinians have a tragic history of becoming embroiled in the region’s conflicts. Some Lebanese continue to blame the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for catalyzing the 1975-1990 civil war through its armed presence, which threatened to upset the delicate Christian-Muslim sectarian balance in the country.  Today, Lebanon’s estimated 350,000 Palestinians are confined to 12 refugee camps and denied many basic services.

In 1991, Kuwait expelled almost all its Palestinian residents, who comprised about 30 percent of the state’s population. The expulsion was in response to then PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s decision to support former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Iraq’s Palestinian population, which was treated relatively well under President Hussein, was persecuted after the 2003 US-led invasion with thousands displaced or murdered in the ensuing sectarian bloodshed. Many of them continue to live in squalid refugee camps along the Jordan-Iraq border.

'Conditions are difficult'

Hassan lives in a tiny house belonging to his sister-in-law deep inside Bourj ash-Shemali camp, which he shares with five other families.

“There are three bedrooms only but 25 people living here,” he says. “We are facing very hard conditions. Nobody is doing anything for us. We don’t know anyone here. The people have been very kind to us but there’s not much they can do. They are already poor.”

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