Revolt in Syria by Stephen Starr

Author:Stephen Starr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS026000, Political Science/General, POL000000, Political Science/General
Publisher: Christopher Hurst and Company
Published: 2012-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Poverty was not the exclusive tenure of the rural.

In Hajar Aswad, a Palestinian camp south east of Damascus, thousands live in squalor, though of a more acute kind. They have no fields or orchards from which to fill their bellies. They must live on hard cash.

Whole families live in two-room apartments of not more than fifty square metres. A curtain is pulled over a kitchen area masquerading as another room. Pots and pans are bent out of shape from use. One woman I know whose husband was ‘martyred’ a few years back in Occupied Palestine raises her children on money given from a Palestinian faction.

Outside on the streets dust rises as cars speed past small children. Buildings are crammed together so closely that the air is thin and dust-laden.

At the end of a huge, fly-infested food market in Yarmouk is a roof-top Palestinian cultural centre run by a former militant turned musician. I gave classes in journalism writing there in the summer of 2010. On one occasion a woman collapsed as she stood up at the end of one of the classes. She came round a few minutes later and said she hadn’t eaten all day and that most days she ate little. Once a day the director, who preaches understanding and responsibility to the dozens of unemployed Palestinians that turn up, would get someone to fetch bread, hummus and fava beans for all to eat.

The descendants of the Palestinians who fled their homeland for Syria in 1948 and 1967 today say they are Palestinian. In theory, Syria’s Palestinian refugee population are still guests of the nation. However, in almost every facet of life, they are Syrian. In practice they have married into Syrian families, are allowed to own property and may attend university and work as Syrians do. Their everyday accents are Syrian.

Though it was largely ignored by the English-language media, dozens of people were killed during protests over the summer months of 2011. The area of Hajar Aswad, south east of the capital, saw dozens of anti-government protests take place with maybe two dozen deaths in May and June. Some Palestinians were protesting in support of their Syrian brothers, and against the killing of peaceful demonstrators, though the majority of the demonstrators were Syrians from the Golan Heights who had been displaced in previous wars. (They were protesting because the regime had done nothing for them since they were forced from their land. Now they lived in filth inside a Palestinian camp.) Palestinians too were shot down.

In July I had an argument with a well-educated Palestinian man in his mid-forties. “The president needs some time; you cannot expect him to change everything within a few weeks, or even months,” I said.

“He is the president of the Syrian Arab Republic,” he said, as he held out his arms. “If he cannot control things then what is he doing? He says changing the constitution takes time? In 2000 the constitution was changed overnight, and for what reason? To lower the age of the Syrian president from forty to thirty-six.

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