(barrel bomb destruction in Handarat)
April 18, 2014
The Syrian regime continues to shell Khan Esheih refugee camp in Rural Damascus. It has also been relentlessly dropping barrel bombs on the Handarat refugee camp in Aleppo.
Meanwhile, the huge list of Palestinians tortured to death by the regime continues to increase. Ali Yacoub, a young Palestinian, died after being tortured to death in a regime prison, he had been detained for over 8 months. There has been no entry of aid into Yarmouk for 8 consecutive days making the already dire situation in the camp even worse. Although the siege has been at least partially imposed since December 2012, UNRWA has intermittently been permitted to enter small, but lifesaving, amounts of aid. The current 8 day arbitrary moratorium of aid delivery began just 2 days after a previous 7 day suspension had ended. A 57 year old resident of Yarmouk, Shamseyyah Shtaiweh, passed away from the lack of medical supplies available in the camp.
Amnesty International has already concluded that what the Syrian regime is doing to Yarmouk constitutes "numerous war crimes".
Lest we forgot, as this ongoing terror befalls Palestinians in Syria, that the Syrian regime has already tortured at least 168 Palestinians to death according to Palestinian Human Rights Collective PLHR/SYRIA. In addition, more than 200 Palestinians from Yarmouk have been slaughters by either bombing, shelling, snipers or the siege.
What we witness today will be remembered by the Palestinians of tomorrow as another ruinous chapter of our history. What they will wonder, though, is why this particular chapter was coated in our silence.
-Talal is a Palestinian-American writer based in Brooklyn. He tweets here.
(For up-to-date coverage of Yarmouk and Palestinian in Syria, visit our Yarmouk section.)
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