Once a symbol of Palestinian identity, a Syrian city struggles to rise again
Yarmouk, Syria – On a wildly warm summer morning, the inspectors cleverly step from a street and took a critical look at the war storage buildings in the Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus.
After Yarmouk’s 14 -year grinding civil war, Alley turned into things that cut the population of the camp (from 160,000 Palestinian refugees) and turned the actual capital of the Palestinian diaspora and the resistance movements into a facility.
Survived Ramshackle structures – usually missing roofs and walls and stairs to anywhere – have very few common point, savings for temporary structures, designed for less permanence than speed and low price. Most of them are sprinkling the holes selected by bullets or shrapnel.
Muhammad Ali, one of the inspectors, said, “There is nothing to be repaired here. We need to take it completely,” he said, in the pile of uncertain gray rubble with his eyes.
He pressed a tablet to record his assessment and sigh as his partner Jaber Al-Khatib, raised himself to a wall, and examined the skeletal residues of a bombed, three-storey building.
1. A mother and her child are once walking towards one of the destroyed streets in Yarmouk, the live Palestinian camp, except Damascus. 2. A pile of rubble reflects the damage given to Yarmouk headquarters of the popular façade for the liberation of the Palestine – General Command.
“The columns look good, Al Al-Khatib said.
Ali raised the iPad and then caught a picture he would upload to a central database. After 9 am and the heat was already exceeding 96 degrees. And they still had many buildings to be evaluated.
“Okay. Let’s continue,” he said.
Map of the damage in Yarmouk will require a few weeks more for voluntary engineers at the Yarmouk Social Development Committee. However, work is seen as vital in reviving a community that once developed.
In order not to mention the inevitable looting, the following waves of fighting and air strikes have damaged or destroyed about 40% of the 520 acres of the camp. Vital services such as electricity, water and especially sewage are not best intermittently or available. Even now, the Moloz Mountains-40 Olympic-sized swimming pools are enough to fill the pool, drawing almost every street.
Jamal Al-Khatib, an engineer, takes a question about the damaged buildings in Syria’s Yarmouk.
(For Hasan Belala/The Times)
Omar Ayoub, who chaired the committee and coordinated with Al-Khatib, Ali and other engineers, said, yar When compared to its size and population, Yarmouk, the highest price in Syria has caused damage and distress, ”he said. Although Yarmouk’s great slits are still devastated, the conditions are now “five stars ..
Nevertheless, people were slow to return. According to Ayoub and aid agencies, 8,000 Palestinians, only 28,000 people returned. They and tens of thousands still hoped to return to Yarmouk, the concept of “home, – here or where their families left behind the 1948 war and the establishment of Israel – never seem far away.
“Streets, streets, shops and cafes felt like a mini boy-everything was named after places in the house, Ay Ayoub said.
“Will life have changed and war has changed, and the war has changed people’s conviction on Palestine.”
Drew Muhyyee Al-Deen Ghannam, a 48-year-old electrician who left the camp for Sweden in 2013, visited last month. He was investigating the idea of bringing his family back, but the place signs he once used to find his apartment went. He finally found him standing, but he got out of something valuable.
Ghannam said, living here, you had such a strong connection with Palestine, but we still didn’t feel like foreigners in Syria, ”he said.
1. Years of war has devastated most of the streets in Yarmouk, Syria.
2. A construction worker in Yarmouk. A few of the former inhabitants returned to the camp.
3. A girl and her mother visit the grave of a relative in the Yarmouk Cemetery in the midst of the destruction that emerged during the Syrian Civil War.
He won’t leave Sweden. “I was planning to stay [here]. But it would be very difficult with the kids. ”He added that his 16-year-old child hopes to read aviation.
Others returned to Yarmouk by the Sheer economy, including Wael Oweymar, a 50 -year -old internal contractor who returned in 2021 because they could no longer get rent in other Damascus suburbs. He spent his last four years not only to relieve what remains of his apartment, but also to correct his surroundings.
What can I do? Is there just give up and heart attack? “He said, breaking an easy smile.
Do you see this street? he said. “I swept all this region myself. I and there was no one except me and stray dogs. But when people saw something developed, they encouraged them to return.”
Oweymar counted a victory.
“It was systematic, all this destruction. Intention was to ensure that the Palestinians did not return,” he said.
“But they destroyed it and we rebuild it, Oweymar said. “We are the Palestinians, we are a reconstruction person.”
Oweymar’s words were a measure of the restless relationship that the Assad family protected with Palestinians. Compared to Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon, what is currently 450,000 is estimated to be 450,000. Although they never give citizenship, they can work in any profession and their own property. Under the rule of Assad’s father Hafez, the Palestinians joined a special corps called “Army of Liberation ında in the army.
1. It is common to see that the walls or roofs of the buildings are missing in Yarmouk. Many of them with bullets or scrap.
2. Yarmouk once had 1.2 million residents. The estimates currently say that about 28,000 people live there, 8,000 are Palestinians.
3. In the middle of some rubble, the burnt and torn image of the general secretary of the Palestinian – General Command for the liberation of the Palestinian – General Command lies.
Popular fronts of the liberation of Palestine and Hamas opened educational bases in the country and directed camps. At the same time, the Syrian security services followed the Palestinians with the same meticulousness against the opponents who grew up at home.
Assad continued his father’s policies and aligned with the Axis of Resistance, an Iranian -backed fraction network defending the Palestinian cause against the United States and Israel. Nevertheless, more than 3,000 Palestinians were imprisoned during the civil war – only a few dozen creatures appeared.
“Assad became the standard carrier of Palestinian resistance, put it on everything he did for the Syrians. But he also massacred the Palestinians. We didn’t know where we were standing with him because of this duality.”
When the civil war started, a miniature version was played in Yarmouk. Some groups insisted on impartiality, while others faced Assad or rebels. Syrian army siege, groups entered Yarmouk’un.
Neighborhoods ran the front facades; Warriors drilled holes from the walls of the buildings to avoid sniper fire everywhere. In 2015, Jihadists from the Islamic State seized the camp. As the war continued, siege increased with the right groups that predicted that at least 128 people died of hunger. AYUB, a Portly scriptwriter with a smile, was only 66 kilos during siege.
“More people died here because of hunger, Ay Ay 4 said, referring to the settler, which Israel has created a blockade that the aid groups of aid resulted in famine.
Imiz Our final dream was to eat our favorite food before he died. A neighbor, I remember, he wanted a French fries – just one, Ay Ayoub said, a Wan smile on his face.
Mohammad Ali, 63, is one of the engineers working to examine damaged buildings and evaluate future restructuring needs in Yarmouk.
The Islamic State was finally pushed out in 2018, but Assad’s forces, including regular military units and allied groups, looted everything that was not destroyed, and even fires into the houses to explode from the walls. They tear the toilets, window frames and light switches and sold copper wiring.
Eight months since Assad’s post, there is little clarity about what Syria’s new officials will take on the conflict of the Israeli-Palestinian.
Many officials say that Syria is not under any circumstances to fight with Israel and paid enough money for the Palestinians for advocacy. In the meantime, the US, Israel and Syrian officials and the new government about the new government, including a number of Palestinian factions, including “terrorist organizations,” he received conditional assistance.
There are already signs that Damascus is taking action to fulfill these demands.
Abu Bilal, a member of the popular front of Palestine’s liberation, who gave Nom de Guerre because he was not allowed to speak to the media, is still thinking about the party headquarters in Yarmouk. Although the group remained neutral during the civil war, Assad escaped, after escaping, the armed armeds of the new authorities confiscated the group’s weapons and training camps.
“His messages were clear: There is no political activity or military exhibition. We can only participate in social or academic research,” he said.
The authority added that the Palestinian factions compatible with Assad came to a harder treatment. Most of its leaders left the countries and seized institutions related to groups such as hospitals, newspapers and radio stations.
A building that was damaged during the 14 -year Syrian Civil War creates a ground for a cemetery in Yarmouk, a Palestinian camp that once developed.
None of this shows sympathy for al-Khatib and Ali, who worked on their young days in the liberation army.
“All [Palestinian] The factions should remain neutral and prevent any side, Assad or the rebels from entering. If they stayed united, they would protect the camp, El al-Khatib said.
He waved in the landscape of demolition in front of him.
“Now the Palestinians are poorer than ever. All groups were to destroy the economic infrastructure in Yarmouk,” he said.
The fire, which once appeared to be a furniture shop, stopped before the scorched carcass.
Do you see the burns here? Ali said. “We do not know whether the concrete is affected because we do not know how much it burns, not the war damage.”
Al-Khatib looked at the scorching signs on the ceiling, then shook his head in the remains in front of him.
In recent weeks, more countries said they would recognize the Palestinian state, but there is more concern here.
“Now when do we have to think or fight for a state?” Al-Khatib asked. “Our only concern is to secure our homes.”
