WHEN the bombing finally stops, little will remain of Palestine’s capital-in-exile. Yarmouk, on the southern edge of Damascus, Syria’s capital, was once the Palestinians’ largest and liveliest refugee camp, sheltering displaced Iraqis and Syrians too. But two weeks of relentless bombing by the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his Russian backers has reduced it to rubble. Of the 350,000 people who once lived in Yarmouk, only a few hundred remain.

Syria used to treat the Palestinians well. They were provided with health care and education and allowed to own homes. Many worked for the government. Mr Assad gave Palestinian security forces arms and training to police their camps. Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, had more access to the president than most of the cabinet.

But when Mr Meshal sided with his Qatari financiers, who backed Syria’s Islamist rebels after the uprising in 2011, Mr Assad and his men fumed at the treachery. They blasted Hamas for using its tunnelling skills to dig escape routes for the rebels. Some of its members fought with more radical groups. In 2015 the jihadists of Islamic State (IS) took control of most of Yarmouk. Jabhat al-Nusra, an erstwhile al-Qaeda affiliate, grabbed the rest. When the regime was not fighting them, they battled each other.

The latest combat is on a different level. More has been damaged in a fortnight, say residents, than in the previous four years. Al-Nusra’s fighters surrendered to the government on April 30th and boarded buses bound for Idlib, a rebel redoubt in the north. Its arsenal all but spent, IS is negotiating a similar deal, though it does not want to go to Idlib.

Many Palestinians believe the regime wants to redevelop Yarmouk—for use by Syrians. In March the government unveiled the second stage of a plan to rebuild southern Damascus, including areas that run along the camp’s edge. Businessmen eye opportunities. Some suggest relocating the Palestinians to distant scrubland.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has remained neutral during Syria’s war and some Palestinian groups even fought with the regime on the camp’s frontlines. But there is little hope that things will return to the way they were. “We’ll increasingly face a climate in which we cannot continue to live,” says a refugee from Yarmouk, now in London.