{"id":88662,"date":"2015-04-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/actionpal.ahmadalkhuleyf.net\/post\/864\/"},"modified":"2015-04-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-07T21:00:00","slug":"864","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/post\/864","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Inhumane&#8217;: Catastrophe in Yarmouk."},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Founded in 1957 just south of the Syrian capital of Damascus, the Yarmouk refugee camp was home to\u00c2\u00a0approximately 150,000\u00c2\u00a0Palestinian refugees prior to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Today, there are\u00c2\u00a0approximately 18,000\u00c2\u00a0Palestinian refugees and Syrians remaining in Yarmouk, including\u00c2\u00a0approximately 3,500\u00c2\u00a0children. The rest have fled to other parts of Syria or neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon.<\/li>\n<li>Yarmouk has been besieged by the Syrian army since late 2012, when rebels fighting to overthrow the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad occupied the camp, causing starvation and\u00c2\u00a0disease.\u00c2\u00a0At least 200\u00c2\u00a0Palestinians and Syrians have starved to death in Yarmouk as a result.\u00c2\u00a0On April 6, 2015, the UN\u00c2\u00a0warned\u00c2\u00a0that residents were subsisting on approximately 400 calories a day, out of a needed 2,000.<\/li>\n<li>On April 1, 2015, fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) launched an assault on Yarmouk, taking control of most of the camp within a few days,\u00c2\u00a0reportedly\u00c2\u00a0beheading two of the camp&#8217;s Palestinian defenders amidst fears of wider atrocities. Additionally, the Syrian armed forces\u00c2\u00a0reportedly\u00c2\u00a0began dropping \u201cbarrel bombs\u201don Yarmouk on April 5 in an effort to stop ISIS&#8217; advance on Damascus.<\/li>\n<li>The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been unable to deliver desperately needed supplies since the fighting began on April 1.\u00c2\u00a0According\u00c2\u00a0to UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness: \u201cThat means that there is no food, there is no water and there is very little medicine\u201d\u00a6 The situation in the camp is beyond inhumane.\u201d\u009d<\/li>\n<li>The violence in Yarmouk highlights the dire situation that Palestinians in Syria face as they attempt to navigate the complex political realities of the country and the unrest that has ravaged it over the last four years. According to the UN,\u00c2\u00a0approximately 220,000\u00c2\u00a0Syrians have been killed since 2011, including more than 76,000 in 2014 alone. Estimates of the number of Palestinians killed vary. According to Palestinian officials, between\u00c2\u00a01,000 and 1,300\u00c2\u00a0Palestinians have been confirmed killed, with about the same number missing and unaccounted for, while\u00c2\u00a0The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria\u00c2\u00a0puts the number of Palestinian fatalities at\u00c2\u00a02725.<\/li>\n<li>Prior to the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, there were\u00c2\u00a0approximately 526,000\u00c2\u00a0Palestinian refugees in Syria, living in nine official and three unofficial camps run by the UNRWA, the largest of which was Yarmouk.<\/li>\n<li>Most of the Palestinian refugees in Syria, including Yarmouk, arrived in the country after being\u00c2\u00a0expelled\u00c2\u00a0from their homes during Israel&#8217;s creation in 1948. Most are originally from the northern part of Mandate Palestine, mainly from Safad, Haifa, and Jaffa. For nearly seven decades, Israel has denied them their\u00c2\u00a0internationally-recognized\u00c2\u00a0right to return, as enshrined in\u00c2\u00a0Resolution 194, passed by the\u00c2\u00a0UN General Assembly\u00c2\u00a0in December 1948, which stipulated: \u201crefugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.\u201d\u009d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Founded in 1957 just south of the Syrian capital of Damascus, the Yarmouk refugee camp was home to\u00c2\u00a0approximately 150,000\u00c2\u00a0Palestinian refugees prior to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Today, there are\u00c2\u00a0approximately 18,000\u00c2\u00a0Palestinian refugees and Syrians remaining in Yarmouk, including\u00c2\u00a0approximately 3,500\u00c2\u00a0children. The rest have fled to other parts of Syria or neighboring countries [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-88662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-opinion-articles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actionpal.tech\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}