The Al Yarmouk refugee camp, south of Damascus, could be one of several camps in Gaza: the devastation and misery of its population is similar to that of the Strip, with the difference that Palestinians have long Refugees in Syria do not suffer attacks and fighting firsthand.
Al Yarmouk was extensively destroyed in 2018, in an offensive by Syrian regime forces to expel armed groups that took control of part of the countryside, including the jihadist Islamic State. Russian aviation, in support of the Syrian Army, repeatedly bombed Al Yarmouk. Most of its residents left and settled in other smaller camps in Syria, and only years later began to return to what had been the largest compound in the entire country, with a population of more than 150,000 people and an area greater than two square kilometers.
Hayat Mohamed was born in Syria, where his parents fled after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) offered them accommodation in Al Yarmouk when it was built in 1957. Decades later he had to leave for air and artillery attacks, combat and a tight military encirclement. The elderly woman returned home four years ago, but says she has not yet been able to rebuild the house, where she lives with her son, his wife and their children. Previously, they had been in the Al Yaramana camp, on the outskirts of Damascus, but the rent was expensive, he regrets, and he decided to return to Al Yarmouk, despite the destruction and lack of services that still persist today.
He tells elDiario.es that two of his sons disappeared in 2012, when the Syrian popular revolt turned into an armed conflict and many men were arbitrarily detained on suspicion that they sympathized or collaborated with the opposition to the regime.
“I have nothing now, I lost my children, what else can happen?” Mohamed asks himself with calm despair. “Where can I go? I will stay here until God wants,” says the woman, resigned to ending her days in Al Yarmouk.
Once a prominent commercial district of Damascus, where many Syrians came to shop for the variety of merchandise at affordable prices, few businesses now remain in business. Ahmad Al Shagury reopened his ice cream parlor in 2022, after a decade of closure, and converted it into a falafel shop, the cheapest and most caloric breakfast that the few residents of the countryside who have returned in recent years can afford. According to UNRWA, some 2,400 families lived in Al Yarmouk in September 2024. The organization estimates that there were around 430,000 Palestinian refugees left across Syria in 2023, after 12 years of civil war, and that 60% of them had been displaced. at least once.
Al Shagury, a 47-year-old Syrian, tells this newspaper that the situation has changed radically since the fall of Bashar Al Assad’s regime on December 8. The entrances to Al Yarmouk are no longer guarded by uniformed personnel and goods can enter without problems and without the need to pay bribes. “There are a lot of people who have returned this month,” says Al Shagury in front of his store, where several people are queuing to buy falafel. “Now people can rehabilitate their houses and businesses,” adds the man, being optimistic about the future of the countryside that has also welcomed him.
Samer Yalbut did not want to wait too long and, since the day after the dictator fled to Russia, he has been working to rebuild his family home. “Before we couldn’t return to our house, because the regime didn’t allow it,” he explains to elDiario.es in front of a two-story building that was very damaged. He adds that he needed approval from a government department dedicated to Palestinian refugee affairs, which he never obtained, and that there was an Iranian presence in that area of the camp.
The Palestinian feels proud of the work he has done in these four weeks with his own hands. “I have fixed a room so I can live, little by little I will fix the rest,” he says, showing the only habitable room on the first floor. As soon as possible, he will bring his family. He also wants to rebuild the car workshop where he previously worked under his home, a job he has continued to dedicate himself to during his time away from Al Yarmouk.
Right now he doesn’t have electricity or running water, but he says it’s better than renting. “I used to pay rent, but I don’t want to live at the mercy of tenants, every few months they raised our rent and threatened to kick us out. “This is my home and I want to live here,” says the refugee, born in Syria to a family that was forced to leave Palestine in 1948.
It is difficult to imagine Yalbut’s daily life in this devastated and depressed area, which still bears the traces of the worst days of violence that Al Yarmouk witnessed. What remains of his home is located on 30th Street, which was the battle front between the regime forces, supported by Palestinian militias, and the terrorists of the Islamic State group and other radicals. The wide street is deserted and the buildings on both sides are destroyed, some reduced to rubble.
“The countryside needs massive reconstruction,” says Juliette Touma, UNRWA communications director for the Middle East. “In recent years, people have slowly begun to return to Al Yarmouk. Now we are seeing more people returning and reuniting with their families,” he adds. Touma explains that before the fall of the regime, the UN agency had begun repairing and painting some of its facilities, such as a school and a clinic; but after the collapse of the Al Assad government, UNRWA has not continued that work. “The people of Al Yarmouk have suffered immense suffering and inconceivable atrocities and trauma. It is also necessary to repair the social fabric and turn the page,” says the communications director.
This suffering and atrocities are common to other Palestinian refugee camps, since they were victims of the violence and poverty caused by the civil war, just like the Syrians, but they were in a situation of absolute helplessness. Several inhabitants of the Yaramana camp – also called the martyrs’ camp because there is a cemetery where fighters from Palestinian factions have been buried – recount their horrible experiences at the hands of the security forces and gangs of the Al Assad regime.
“Whoever left the camp didn’t know if he was going to come back,” says Ahmed Saleh, who was arrested at a checkpoint in 2015, detained for a hundred days and tortured. He assures elDiario.es that they beat him with a plastic pipe and used other torture methods, and that with him there were hundreds of people who suffered the same abuses. He claims that thousands of Palestinians were arrested during the almost 14-year civil war in Syria and are still missing today. If it was risky for Syrian citizens to search for their loved ones missing at the hands of the regime, Palestinian refugees were even more afraid and less likely to find them.
Halima Hammud, a 34-year-old woman, says that her husband Mahmud has been missing since 2013, when he was taken away at a regime checkpoint, one of many around the Palestinian refugee camps. At that time, their daughter was barely two months old and has not been able to meet her father. Hammud was informed that her husband was dead: “They sent a list with the names of the deceased Palestinians,” she says. “Of all the missing Palestinians, none have reappeared,” he adds.
The woman has lost hope that she will be able to find Mahmud alive, some 12 years after his arrest, the same age her daughter is now. But she is hopeful about the future in Syria without Bashar Al Assad: “We have gotten rid of whoever turned our children into orphans.”
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