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One of the headquarters of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command is
located in a basement in central Damascus.
All secrecy measures are there:
one cannot drive through the area; hidden guerillas everywhere, and
several dozen CCTV cameras. This is the Palestinian group whose
headquarters and weapons were seized in...
December last year by the Syrian
militants in Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria
near Damascus.
Several people are sitting in a
small room. These are: member of the PFLP GC Political Bureau Anwar
Raja, editor in chief of the Palestinian Forward magazine, Tahsin Al
Hаlabi, and about five other companions who come and go while we speak.
Anwar Raja was born in Jaffa. He
was ten when the Palestinians were thrown out of the Holy Land. He
experienced all the tribulations of the Palestinian struggle firsthand.
And Tahsin Al Hаlabi was only 10 months old when his family had to leave
their home.
‘I was arrested and sentenced
to 12 years in an Israeli prison for the right to see my home. During my
time in Nablus prison I learned English, French, German, and Italian.
And I speak Hebrew better than settlers in Israel’, he laughs.
‘In order to free him from captivity, we seized three Israeli soldiers’, recalls Anwar Raja.
In a reserve staff in Damascus, at the left – the member of
the politburo of Anwar Raja, on the right – Tahsin al Halabi, the
editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the PFLP front
The PFLP is the pioneer of all
forms of the Palestinian struggle. The organization was founded in the
1960s, and it’s always relied for its support on refugee camps. They
split with Yasser Arafat because they dismissed any negotiations,
agreements or concessions with Israel. Starting from the 1960s, the PFPL
managed to establish an expansive international front of struggle for
Palestine, reaching out to groups like RAF and the Japanese Red Army.
They were the ones who, long before HAMAS, would send out kamikazes on
no-return missions. They invented what’s now widely known as suicide
bombers. They were also the first ones to hijack Israeli passenger
airplanes and Israeli servicemen to swap them for prisoners.
PFLP symbolics in the Palestinian refugee camp
In Syria, most Palestinian
training camps and bases belong to the Popular Front. They have always
been the key arms suppliers to Palestine and Lebanon as they had
networks and long-term experience of underground operations. They’re
fundamentally against elections and party lists as they believe these
are just irrelevant games while they remember that 7 million
Palestinians remain refugees.
Until December 2012, the main
PFPL GC headquarters was located in the Yarmouk camp, Damascus, and so
was their main arms dump, which was seized by Syrian rebels. Yarmouk was
the first Palestinian camp from which the Syrian militants threw out
150,000 Palestinian refugees.
The over 700,000 Palestinians
living in Syria are the key target of political and military struggle.
According to the PFPL, what’s happening today in Syria is meant to draw
them into the conflict, to purge Syria of them, and to downplay the
Palestinian issue.
‘Assad punished for refusing to turn away from Palestinians’
‘A very difficult time began for us. All these events will have major implications for Palestine’, says Anwar Raja.
He is really hopeful that Syria
can withstand it, and that this is the only way for Palestinians to
consolidate their positions. In his opinion, the conflict didn’t start
two years ago. It had been predetermined by Syria’s fundamental position
on the Palestinian issue. All countries of the region turned away from
Palestinians and bargained with the US and Israel, whether explicitly or
implicitly. Syria was the only one that didn’t give in, he believes.
‘By 2002 the Israeli flags were raised over all the Arabic capital cities except for Syria’, Anwar Raja comments.
‘The key demand of the
Palestinians is the return of the Palestinian refugees. Israel will
never agree to it as this would bring its end closer. In 2002, the
so-called Arab Peace Initiative in Beirut declared the ‘land for peace’
principle. At that time, only Libya and Assad required introducing the
return of the refugees clause’, reminds Anwar Raja.
Palestinian refugees living in Syria take part in the
Jerusalem Day demonstration at al-Yarmouk camp near Damascus.(Reuters /
Khaled al-Hariri)
He believes that following the
invasion of Iraq, Qaddafi rejected any Palestinian support, but that
wasn’t enough to save him. Bashar al-Assad didn’t turn away from the
Palestinians, and that was the reason that the West directed the wave of
militants against Syria and spread out the Islamic propaganda that
Assad was the root of all their troubles.
‘And now Israel wants to abolish the Palestinian refugee term through the UN’, says the member of the PFLP Political Bureau.
‘Syria didn’t just allow us to
stay here. All of our training camps were in Syria, including the
Islamic Jihad. Even HAMAS was exercising here in our camps’, explains Anwar Raja. He reminds that at the PFLP reference, HAMAS was able to settle in Syria. ‘We told Hafez al-Assad that HAMAS were fighters, and he allowed them to come over’.
‘The West and the Arabs insist
that the war broke out in Syria because the regime had failed to
execute reforms. This is just absurd. Syria held the Palestinian issue
on the table. Syria personifies the very idea of the refugees’ right to
return. In any other country, the Palestinians are just forbidden to
talk about politics’, he believes.
‘Palestinian camps in Syria
were attacked. The attackers opened fire, provoked and abducted
Palestinians. We told the armed opposition that we would not get
involved in the armed struggle in Syria, as we were guests there. The
Palestinians formed committees for the sake of the camps security. But
George Sabra (the opposition leader) stated on TV that they considered
Palestinian camps part of Syria. The militants broke into camps. Yarmouk
was ransacked. We asked Khaled Mashaal and Mahmoud Abbas to talk to the
opposition, but they never played the intermediary role,’ says Tahsin Al Hаlabi.
‘Opposition wants refugees out of Syria’
People I’ve been talking to say
that Palestinians are being forced out of Syria. It’s the main goal of
the opposition, they say. But they failed to achieve it – Palestinians
have remained in Syria despite the terror they’ve been exposed to.
‘The fact that the opposition
is forcing Palestinians out of Syria means that they are acting on the
orders of foreign actors. Only 2,000-3,000 of our refugees fled to
Lebanon. People are aware it was not the Syrian army that invaded the
Yarmouk camp. They know that 700-800 Palestinians were killed by the
militants, and dozens were tortured,’ says Anwar Raja.
‘If the opposition sought to
liberate Palestine, as they sometimes proclaim, Palestinians and Syria
in general wouldn’t be in such trouble,’ he adds with an air of certainty.
He’s got the evidence to back up
his statement. One of the opposition leaders suggested banning
Palestinian refugees from working in 72 professions after the victory,
like it was done in Lebanon. This way they want to punish Palestinians
for not supporting the rebels. But in Lebanon, the ban was introduced
for a different reason – Palestinians did take part in the civil war.
Palestinians living in Syria take part in a protest at al-Yarmouk Camp near Damascus.(Reuters / Khaled al-Hariri)
The PFPL says the opposition has
been juggling with facts when it accused Damascus of failing to take on
Israel in the past decades.
‘When the Soviet Union
collapsed, Syria was left all alone. But it didn’t change its policy.
Syria defended Lebanon against Israel in the Bekaa Valley. Syria lost as
many as 85 MiG fighters in the battles of 1992. This is what forced
Israel to leave Lebanon in 2000, not the efforts of Arab nations. All
Syrians fought against Israel in Lebanon and all of them paid a high
price for that resistance,’ Tahsin Al Hаlabi.
‘Syria invaded by intolerant, new generation Muslims’
Palestinians have been negative about the actions of rebels not only because they stormed their camps.
’60 television channels are
now broadcasting anti-Syrian propaganda. People watch it and take it at
face value. All the names of the military groups are Islamic. But look
at what’s happening! Jihadists beheaded statue of Syrian poet Abul
Ala al-Maarri near Aleppo. He was persecuted during his lifetime, but
never executed. And now these people came and decided they could be the
judges,’ he exclaims in surprise.
He believes that Syria has been
invaded by a new generation of Muslims, brought up by policymakers from
countries with zero tolerance on other religions. These new Muslims have
set out to impose new rules that are unprecedented for Syria.
‘If Muslims don’t travel to
countries when you have a population mix, then they can believe the most
extraordinary things and do very strange things. The statue of Umm
Kulthum, a legendary female singer who backed the Palestinian cause, was
recently hijabed,’ he tells me with a laugh.
In a reserve staff in Damascus, at the left – the member of
the politburo of Anwar Raja, on the right – the editor-in-chief of the
newspaper of the Tahsin Al Halabi front
He reminds me that there are
10-12 percent Christians among the Palestinians, and that Palestinians
have always been friendly towards other confessions. Syria has a broad
range of confessions but it never had any sectarian conflicts while now
Syrians are being forced to believe that they are run by just one
community.
Members of the PFPL are convinced
that after two years of the country being destroyed the Syrians are
basically living in the same conditions that Palestinian refugees, who
were forced to leave their houses and their lands, have been living in
for the last 65 years: without water, electricity, or opportunities to
make a living.
‘Destruction and devastation
everywhere – that’s what the opposition has brought to Syria. What do
they propose people fight for? Their recruitment numbers are falling. In
Idlib, Zabadani and 5 or 6 other key places the rebels agreed to a
ceasefire. The authorities promised amnesty to those who lay down arms.
It doesn’t mean that the people who agree support the regime – it just
means they are against the war’, thinks Tahsin Al Hаlabi.
These people believe that the US intentions are transparent.
‘It’s an international
conspiracy against Syria. Foreign powers have a plan to redraft borders
in this region. They use all the means available to make people forget
about the Palestinian issue and create a lot of small states, each with a
crazy ideology. But Syria is holding on’, says Tahsin Al Hаlabi.
‘It’s not the regime that’s
holding on, it’s the people. It’s not the heroism of one person, group
or party. People and movements light up like stars and then fade away –
we, Palestinians, know that very well. Some are created specifically to
blind everyone with their artificial light. But sooner or later the
illusion will shatter’, elaborates Anwar Raja.
Nadezhda Kevorkova, Damascus
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