How the CIA helped jihadist rebels invade and occupy the capital of the Palestinian diaspora

Introduction

The Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria was thrust into international conscientiousness in March 2014 when the United Nations published the now iconic image of “thousands of Palestinians waiting amid the rubble of crumbling buildings to receive food aid in Yarmouk.”

When describing the tragedy in Yarmouk, most Western journalists and human rights groups have overwhelmingly highlighted the role of the Syrian army, which imposed a siege on the camp in January 2013. Philip Louter of Amnesty International described for example how “Syrian [government] forces are committing war crimes by using starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. The harrowing accounts of families having to resort to eating cats and dogs, and civilians attacked by snipers as they forage for food, have become all too familiar details of the horror story that has materialized in Yarmouk.” Similar descriptions of Yarmouk, in which blame for the suffering of the camp’s civilians is attributed to the Syrian government, have often appeared in the Western press, including in Foreign Affairs, the Guardian, the Independent, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post.

Certainly, the suffering of Palestinians in Yarmouk was very real, and it is clear the Syrian government’s brutal siege has contributed to it. However, crucial facts surrounding events in Yarmouk have been consistently omitted in Western media reporting; facts which, if known, provide a more accurate picture of who was responsible for the suffering in Yarmouk, and what could have been done to end it.

Largely omitted is the role that jihadist rebels and their state sponsors have played in driving the conflict in Yarmouk. Flush with weapons supplied by the CIA and Gulf intelligence agencies, rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Syrian wing of al-Qaeda (known as the Nusra Front) jointly invaded and occupied Yarmouk in December 2012. Rebels considered Yarmouk the “Gateway to Damascus” due to its strategic location in the suburbs of the Syrian capital. Controlling Yarmouk was crucial to the rebel effort to topple the Syrian government.

These jihadist rebels, including many foreign fighters, invaded Yarmouk against the will of the camp’s Palestinian residents, who wished to remain neutral in the conflict. Rebels disregarded Palestinian pleas against an invasion, considering the civilian suffering that would inevitably result as simply the “price of jihad.” Within days, hundreds of thousands of Yarmouk’s residents (the vast majority) had fled the camp to escape fighting between the rebels on the one hand and the Syrian army and allied Palestinian militias on the other. This mass displacement resembled that of the Nakba, or “catastrophe” which Palestinians suffered at the hands of Zionist militias in 1947-48.

The Syrian government then imposed the siege on Yarmouk in an effort to prevent al-Qaeda (hereafter Nusra) and its FSA allies from advancing further on the heart of Damascus. Once in control of Yarmouk, rebels destroyed and looted homes, stole medical equipment and supplies, imposed fundamentalist religious rule, siphoned off scarce food for their own fighters and families, and often prevented civilians, in particular men, from leaving the camp, wishing to use them as a source of recruitment and as human shields.

This led Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee, to insist in January 2014 (2 months before the infamous UN photo was published) that the rebels occupying Yarmouk, including Nusra, are “known for their terrorist links and methodology” and that Palestinians “everywhere know… that those who have taken the camp hostage are these groups, not the Syrian authorities,” while Maher Taher, a member of the political bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), described how, “There have been attempts by all Palestinian groups to help broker peace in Yarmouk. We reached agreements, but [the rebels] have a problem with implementation. The deal is essentially that armed groups should leave the camp and Palestinians should return. The Syrian government is being cooperative with these operations and has granted chances to feed civilians inside. But at the moment of implementation, the rebels break the agreement.”

The rebel effort to take Yarmouk camp hostage, with the assistance of external state backers, has served as a microcosm of the Syria conflict more broadly. Journalist Nir Rosen has noted that although the US and its allies claimed to intervene in Syria “on behalf of the people,” they were in fact “flooding the country with fighters and explosives” while supporting “the most reactionary, nihilistic, obscurantist and dangerous forces,” who are “destroying the country socially, economically, and physically, which is the goal.”

The disaster that would befall Syrian civilians as a result of US support for jihadist rebels was acknowledged directly in US foreign policy circles. Writing in Foreign Policy in August 2012, four months before jihadist rebels invaded Yarmouk, Gary Gambill explained that “militant Salafi-jihadist groups are assuming a steadily greater role in fighting [Syrian] regime forces on the ground. . . . Whatever misfortunes Sunni Islamists may visit upon the Syrian people, any government they form will be strategically preferable to the Assad regime. . . So long as Syrian jihadis are committed to fighting Iran and its Arab proxies, we should quietly root for them.”

Without understanding the role played by the rebels and their backers in the CIA and Gulf intelligence agencies, it is impossible to understand how and why thousands of Palestinians and Syrians from Yarmouk camp have died, why hundreds of thousands have been displaced (many becoming refugees for the second time) and why the camp, once considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora and a symbol of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Palestine, now lies in ruins.

In this essay, I provide a brief history of the rebel invasion and occupation of Yarmouk camp, while highlighting the role played by the rebels’ state sponsors. In doing so, I discuss the major events in Yarmouk from the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2011 until the defeat of the rebels and liberation of the camp in 2018.

The Crisis Begins

Yarmouk, with a pre-war population of some 150,000 Palestinians and some 650,000 Syrians, was the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, lying in the southern outskirts of Damascus. Yarmouk was established in 1957 for Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their homes by Zionist militias as part of the establishment of the state of Israel in 1947-48, events known by Palestinians as the “catastrophe” or “Nakba.” Some of these refugees were re-settled in Yarmouk, which soon came to be considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora. As Palestinians were granted all the rights of Syrians except citizenship and the ability to vote, Palestinians from the camp quickly integrated into the social and cultural life of the Syrian capital. Over time, many Syrians came to reside within the borders of the camp as well, and Yarmouk gradually became incorporated into the broader Damascus suburbs.

Controversy regarding Palestinians erupted during the early weeks of anti-government protests, when Buthaina Shaaban, a close advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, blamed Palestinians for rioting and attacking Syrian security forces in the coastal city of Latakia. Al-Akhbar, a leftist Lebanese newspaper viewed as pro-Hezbollah, cited Syrian state media as reporting on March 28, 2011 that “snipers from an armed group opened fire on pedestrians in Latakia” and that these attacks led to the “martyrdom of ten people from the security forces and civilians, and the killing of two armed militants who were roaming the streets of the city, occupied the roofs of some buildings, and opened fire indiscriminately on civilians, thereby spreading panic among the people.” Syrian state media also claimed that some 200 people (mostly from the security forces) were injured as a result, and that reinforcements from the army entered the city in response. These armed militants allegedly roamed the streets, damaging shops and cars, and burning public and private property.

While commenting on these events, Shaaban, pointed a finger at Palestinians directly, claiming to the pro-Syrian government newspaper al-Watan that “persons came from Ramel camp (for Palestinian refugees) into the heart of Latakia and destroyed shops, promoting civil strife and sedition, and when the security forces did not use violence against them, one who claimed to be of the protestors emerged and killed a member of the security forces and two protestors.”

Ahmed Jibril, the head of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), immediately contradicted Shaaban, denying to al-Watan that Palestinians were among the rioters. He claimed instead that the rioters were not Palestinians but Syrian “residents of a neighborhood adjacent to Ramel [Palestinian] camp, lying to the south of it, and which is separated from the camp only by a stream of water.” Jibril also claimed he had clarified this point to Syria’s Information Minister, Mohsen Bilal.

The PFLP-GC is an offshoot of the larger Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist political party and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PFLP was founded by George Habash, a Palestinian Christian who became a refugee in Lebanon as a boy after Zionist militias expelled his family from its home during the 1947-48 Nakba. Jibril, a former officer in the Syrian Army, criticized the PFLP for allegedly placing too much focus on theoretical discussion, and too little emphasis on actual armed struggle against Israel. Jibril split from the PFLP in 1968 and formed the PFLP-GC, which maintained bases in both Syria and Lebanon and remained close with the Syrian government, enjoying the strong support of Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez.

Due to the PFLP-GC’s close ties with the Syrian government, the group became a target of a propaganda campaign meant to delegitimize its role in representing Palestinians in Yarmouk soon after the crisis in Syria began in the spring of 2011.

The Nakba and Naksa Protests

This propaganda campaign began after the controversial events of May and June 2011. On May 15, large demonstrations were organized by Palestinian youth activists in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, as well as in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, to commemorate the Nakba and to agitate for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is now Israel.

In Syria, thousands of Palestinians marched to the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Waving flags and braving Israeli-laid mines, Palestinian protestors crossed the border fence and were welcomed by local Druze residents of the town of Majdal al-Shams. Israeli troops responded by opening fire on the protestors, however, killing 4. Israeli soldiers killed another 10 Palestinian protestors on the Lebanese-Israeli border as well.

The Nakba Day protests were followed three weeks later, on June 5, by protests commemorating the “Naksa” or “setback.” On that day in 1967, Israel defeated the Arab states in the Six Day War, and thereby conquered the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, and Sinai. The Israeli victory set the stage for 50 years of occupation of Palestinian land. During the Naksa protest on the Syrian border in June 2011, protestors once again tried to cross the border fence. This time, Israeli forces responded even more harshly, killing some 22.

Israeli planners observed preparation for the protests in advance (which took place openly through social media), and sought early to establish a narrative claiming that the Syrian government was behind the protests, and that Assad supposedly wished to use them to deflect attention from the anti-government protests he himself faced. On March 23, roughly three weeks before the Nakba Day event, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz had reported that the Israeli army “predicts that Assad may try to ‘create a provocation along the norther border to divert attention from the growing protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.’”

After the Nakba Day protest on May 15, the New York Times quickly repeated this claim, stating that “there were also signs of official support in Lebanon and Syria, where analysts said leaders were using the Palestinian cause to deflect attention from internal problems,” while quoting an Israeli government spokesperson as claiming “This way Syria makes its contribution to the Nakba Day cause, and Assad wins points by deflecting the media’s attention from what is happening inside Syria.”

These claims were repeated three weeks later in the New York Times, after Israeli forces shot more Palestinians during the Naksa Day protests on June 5. The NYT reported that “Both Israel and the United States have suggested that the Syrian government orchestrated the confrontation at the border on Sunday, or at least did nothing to prevent it, to divert attention from its bloody crackdown on the antigovernment uprising in Syria,” while also quoting a shopkeeper from Yarmouk, Mohamed Rashdan, as saying “he believed the demonstration at the border was organized to serve the interests of President Assad, and that the protest had nothing to do with seeking justice for Palestinian refugees and displaced Syrian residents of the Golan Heights. He said that many camp residents blamed the Popular Front [PFLP-GC] for organizing the border protest ‘to help Syria run away from its local crisis.’” The NYT also mentioned a Reuters report that claimed “mourners accused the organization [PFLP-GC] of sacrificing Palestinian lives by encouraging protesters to demonstrate at the Golan Heights.”

Activists from the Syrian opposition spread similar rumors, namely that the Syrian government and PFLP-GC wished to somehow use these non-violent Palestinian protests to threaten Israel’s security. This claim was based on threats made by Rami Makhlouf, Syria’s most powerful businessman, and advisor and cousin of President Assad. Makhlouf told Anthony Shadid of the New York Times that “If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel. . . No way, and nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime.”

Tareq Ibrahim, a pro-opposition Palestinian in Yarmouk who helped organize the Nakba and Nakba demonstrations, noted that “Popular coordination committees of the Syrian revolution informed us of what was being prepared and on the intentions of the regime and the PFLP-GC to use this movement to pressure Israel and present it as a threat to its security. But we could not stop mobilization.”

Ibrahim, who became convinced of these claims about Syrian government intentions, nevertheless acknowledged that members of the Syrian opposition with whom he organized were not supporters of the Palestinian cause, explaining that, “We were surprised by the rejection of certain sections of the Syrian opposition, especially from the liberals and the Muslim brotherhoods (which are now present within the National Coalition and the Syrian National Coalition), to link the Syrian revolution and the Palestinian cause. They justify their refusal by the need to win the world opinion and not to mix the causes for not disturbing the USA.”

It is hard to imagine anyone actually assuming that several thousand unarmed Palestinian refugees posed any kind of actual threat to Israeli security, so it is unlikely that Makhlouf had the looming Nakba protest in mind when making his threat.

Further, it is impossible that the Syrian government, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, could have organized the protests. Journalist Max Blumenthal interviewed Rami Zurayk, a professor of Agronomy at the American University of Beirut (AUB) who participated in the planning meetings for the Nakba Day protest in Lebanon. Blumenthal writes that according to Zurayk, “150 representatives of Palestinian factions and refugee groups gathered” at the planning meeting for the Nakba protest to “wrangle over the nascent movement’s language and long-term strategy. For the first time in recent memory, leaders of groups from across the Palestinian political spectrum agreed to unite under a single symbol, the Palestinian flag, and to place their factional rivalries aside. Almost as significant, according to Zurayk, was the involvement of Lebanese youth and civil society groups in the planning, as well as wealthy Palestinian students who risked bright futures overseas. ‘Every Arab wants to be involved in the Arab Spring,’ he said.”

Similarly, Yassir Ali, one of the protest organizers of the Nakba Day march on the Lebanese border, articulated the enthusiasm of Palestinians wishing to take part, despite the obvious dangers. Ali told the Guardian that “Palestinian people are used to paying with their lives. It’s a big price, but one we are prepared to pay to prove our right to return to the motherland.”

The broad participation of Palestinians in the planning of the Nakba Day protest in Lebanon resulted in some 40,000 Palestinians taking part there. Additionally, the Syrian and Lebanese borders were not the only places where Palestinians organized Nakba Day protests. Palestinians also organized protests in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, and Egypt, some of which also resulted in clashes with Israeli security forces, including at the Erez and Qalandia checkpoints.

The emergence of protests in multiple locations was possible due to collective coordination via Facebook by Palestinian youths in all these countries. The New York Times itself noted that “Palestinian activists have called on the Internet for a mass uprising against Israel to begin on May 15. A Facebook page calling for a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising, had gathered more than 300,000 members before it was taken down in March after complaints that comments posted to it advocated violence.”

Further evidence of the popular nature of the May 15 Nakba protest in Syria in 2011 comes from a Palestinian journalist and pro-opposition activist from Yarmouk, Nidal Bitari. Like Ibrahim, Bitari was against the idea of the protest and actively lobbied others against attending. Bitari describes how “On the morning of 15 May 2011, scores of buses were waiting at the camp’s main entrance to take people to the border about fifty kilometers away. I myself went with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) . . . Even though I had been strongly against the event, I was so carried away by the emotion that I took off my SARC uniform and followed the crowd from the Heights down the precipice-like hill to the no-man’s land and border zone below. Crowds of people, many in traditional dress, mostly young but some in their eighties, crying with joy at times, just wanted to get near this fence that suddenly made return seem so possible. The Israelis were firing tear gas and live bullets at protestors who scaled the fence, some even managing to get into the occupied Golan [emphasis mine].”

It is certainly possible the Syrian government wished to gain positive media attention by supporting the protests and allowing the protests to go forward (removing the checkpoints typically blocking access to the border), but it did not manipulate Palestinians into participating, nor encourage protestors to climb the fence to be shot by Israeli forces. For example, Middle East Online interviewed witnesses of the May 15 Nakba protests and reported that “On the Syrian side, police were deployed to try to stop the first wave of protesters, but they were quickly overwhelmed when a second group arrived [Emphasis mine].” Hassan Hijazi, a Palestinian protestor who managed to climb the border fence and cross into Israel, even reaching Jaffa with the help of an Israeli peace activist, clarified that the Syrian government was not behind the protests, despite Israeli government claims. He told Israeli TV that “We organized the protests on Facebook and the regime at first didn’t allow them to take place although we sent representatives. . . Hezbollah was the one that pressured the Syrian regime to allow us to hold the protests.”

In fact, the Syrian government likely had little choice but to honor Palestinian requests to protest. Had the Syrian government not allowed the protests to go forward in Syria, while protests proceeded apace in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, this would have allowed critics to suggest that the Syrian government did not support the Palestinian cause, and was attempting to suppress Palestinian efforts to struggle for the right of return.

The simple numbers present in each of the two protests on the Syrian border also suggest the Syrian government was not trying to mobilize Palestinians. The Nakba Day protest on May 15 was attended by several thousand protestors. One resident of Majdal al-Shams told the Guardian that “There are thousands and thousands of people on the Syrian border who are trying to cross. There has been a lot of fighting, and of course people are scared.” For the Naksa protest three weeks later, Bitari, who was present once again, notes that “I doubt that there were ever more than one thousand people that day.” If the Syrian government was deliberately trying to organize the protests and mobilize Palestinians to attend, it is odd the second protest would be so much smaller. Apparently this was because the Syrian government attempted to call off the second protest. Bitari notes that on “the eve of the [Naksa] protests, after the Lebanese government cancelled events on its own border, Damascus made known through the PFLP-GC that the protests had been called off.” Leftist Lebanese academic Assad Abu al-Khalil writes that “But an eyewitness at the protests told me that the Palestinian organizations were not present in the protests: that the Syrian regime did not want the Palestinian organizations to mobilize for fear of big massive protests, although Syrian TV was present. “

Who is to Blame?

Despite the obviously popular nature of the protests, the Israeli government continued to promote the conspiracy theory that the protests were being “orchestrated” by Assad, not only to demonize the Syrian government and its PFLP-GC allies, but also to deflect blame for the killings away from the Israeli Army itself.

Blogging for the Telegraph, a then obscure journalist working for a pro-Israel think tank, Michael Weiss, released a document claiming to show a meeting between the governor of Quneitra province, where the protests on the border of Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan heights took place, and Syrian intelligence officials, including Syrian security chief Assef Shawkat. Weiss’ blog post, and his claim that the document provided proof that the Syrian government orchestrated the Nakba Day protests, was then widely promoted in the Israeli press. Weiss originally claimed the document had been provided to him by the governor of Quneitra himself, but then later back pedaled to suggest he had received it from “very well-informed Syrian in a position to authenticate state documents.” This Syrian turned out to be Radwan Ziadeh, who has long had close ties to the US defense establishment and was an early proponent of US military intervention in Syria, in the form a no-fly zone.

While the credibility of the document was already suspect, having allegedly been supplied by someone with close ties to the US government (which was committed to toppling the Syrian government), the credibility of the document was further called into question by journalist Richard Silverstein, who was told by a former senior Israeli government official that Israeli intelligence had provided the document to Weiss. The Telegraph later quietly removed Weiss’ post from the web, replacing it with a generic link to the paper’s opinion page.

Similar Israeli efforts to deflect blame for the brutal killing of Palestinian protestors emerged years later. In another series of protests, known as the “Great Return March” in March 2018, Palestinian refugees in Gaza also attempted to cross the security fence into Israel. Israeli forces once again responded with deadly force against the unarmed refugees during weeks of protests, killing 100 (as of mid-May 2018). Israeli snipers targeted unarmed protestors from safe distances, several instances of which were caught on video, including the shooting of Palestinian footballer, Mohammad Khalil, in the knee, and Abdel Fattah Abd al-Nabi, in the back. Israeli snipers also shot and killed female Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar. Israeli Brigadier General (Reserve) Zvika Fogel acknowledged that Israeli snipers were deliberately targeting protestors (including even children) with live bullets.

This time, Israel claimed that Hamas was behind the protests, in an effort to deflect attention from the actions of the Israeli army, just as it attempted to blame the Syrian government for the same in 2011.

The Funeral Turned Demonstration

Another controversial event occurred on the day after the June 2011 Naksa protest. On June 6, a funeral was held in Yarmouk for several of the Palestinians killed by Israeli snipers. Pro-opposition activists then turned the funeral into a demonstration in which some Yarmouk residents expressed anger at the Syrian government and Palestinian factions, including the PLFP-GC, for failing to support the Naksa protest.

Nidal Bitari explains that “There was a huge anger in Yarmuk about the deaths and the hundreds of wounded—people felt they had been used by the regime, which they held responsible for facilitating access to the border and then not providing any backup. But the rage was almost as great against the [Palestinian] factions for not doing anything to stop the bloodshed. To defuse the situation, we decided that the funeral for the Yarmouk martyrs would have to double as a demonstration.”

Note that while many were indeed angry at the PFLP-GC and Syrian government, this was because the PFLP-GC and Syrian government had failed to support the Naksa protest (did not provide back up, did nothing to stop the bloodshed), and not because they had organized the protests, as Israeli and US officials claimed. The Palestinian Maan News Agency reports for example that the funeral mourners were “Angered over the failure of camp leaders to organize demonstrations marking the Naksa, the anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights [emphasis mine],” while Assad Abu-Khalil reports that “Eyewitnesses in Syria complained to me about the role of the Syrian army and security forces. How they stood idly by while the Israeli terrorist soldiers were committing their crimes.”

While this anger was understandable, it is nevertheless unclear exactly what type of support Bitari and others had expected from the PLFP-GC and Syrian government during the Nakba and Naksa protests. Had the Syrian army attempted to intervene, it would have negated the peaceful nature of the border demonstration, given the Israeli army an additional pretext to shoot protestors, and possibly triggered a larger military confrontation.

Confrontation at the Khalsa

The LA Times summarized events of the funeral, quoting the official Palestinian news agency WAFA as claiming that the PFLP-GC “used live ammunition to shoot at young protesters in Yarmouk camp as they were participating in a funeral procession for Palestinians who had fallen during protests in the Golan Heights on Sunday.” The LA Times reported that between 14 and 20 protestors were killed by the PFLP-GC, while other press outlets, including the National, cited some 14 deaths.

Such a summary of events gives the impression that the PFLP-GC killed many protestors for simply participating in a funeral procession. This view would be promoted by Syrian opposition activists to further claim that both the Syrian government and PFLP-GC are enemies of the Palestinians in Yarmouk and of the Palestinian cause generally.

This was a misleading view of what occurred at the funeral, however. Reuters reports that “mourners threw stones at Palestinian figures who had praised Assad. Hundreds of refugees armed with sticks and stones then headed to the PFLP-GC headquarters and tried to storm it. Several protesters managed to get in and killed one PFLP-GC gunman,” after which the headquarters was burned down. The New York Times quoted Mohamed Rashada, the same shopkeeper quoted above, as explaining that “the crowd began to throw stones at the organization’s headquarters. Then, he said, ‘the building guards began to shoot at us.’”

Nidal Bitari provides a similar account, but suggests the PFLP-GC guards opened fire on protesters first. He explains that, “There were at least thirty thousand at the funeral/demonstration, by far the largest ever held in the camp. Yarmuk Street, about two km long and very wide, was packed from one end to the other. Soon the demonstration got out of hand. Protestors started rampaging and some turned onto the small street where al-Khalsa, the PFLP-GC headquarters, was located. A huge crowd, increasingly agitated, surrounded the building. In my opinion, it was less because of Jibril’s close ties to the government than because al-Khalsa was the closest at hand—even if it had been a Fatah office, I think it would have been attacked. One of the PFLP-GC guards fired at the unarmed crowd and killed a fourteen-year-old boy named Rami Siyam, and other GC militants began shooting from the roof. People went mad. They began setting fire to cars, and thousands stormed the building. Ahmad Jibril and his top deputies had to be rescued by the Syrian army, and PFLP-GC reinforcements were called in from Lebanon. At some point in the mêlée, gas bottles inside the building exploded, starting a fire, and by nightfall the four-story building was badly charred.”

Bitari notes that three people were killed that day, including the young boy Rami Siyam and also a PFLP-GC guard who died in the fire, explaining that the “press articles the next day reported that twelve or thirteen people had been killed during the demonstration, but this was totally false and some press agencies later corrected the story.” Ibrahim al-Ali of the Action Group for Palestinians (AGPS), a UK-based pro-opposition group, lists a lower number of dead as well, claiming four were killed, including two protestors who were shot (the young boy Rami Siyam and also Jamal Ghutan) and two PFLP-GC members (Khalid Rayyan, the guard who was burned to death in the fire, and Naser Mubarak, the PFLP-GC head for the Syria region, who was allegedly stabbed to death by protestors). Journalist Tarek Homoud, who is also a coordinator for AGPS, reports the killing of the PFLP-GC members as well, explaining that Mubarak (whom he refers to as Abu Al Abed Nasir) “was killed by knives as a group arrested him while he tried to calm them down. He was stabbed 50 times” and that “One of the building’s guards was killed by burning alive in his corner.”

Bitari, Homoud, and Ibrahim were all writing later, with a chance to determine how many died, as opposed to press reports from immediately after the incident, which apparently passed along the initial rumors of the number killed (between 14 to 20). Further, as opposition supporters, none of the above mentioned writers would have had an incentive to under count the dead among the protestors.

Other reports suggest that armed groups may have been involved in attacking the Khalsa, rather than just angry protestors armed with sticks and rocks. Journalist Sharmine Narwani reports that according to a Hamas official with whom she spoke, “Some Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters went to Ahmad Jibril’s offices – the Khalesa compound – during the funeral and started shooting,” while al-Akhbar suggested that Salafi elements exploited the funeral in an effort to incite Palestinians against the PFLP-GC, and that this is what led protestors to try to breach the confines of the Khalsa. Asad Abu Al-Khalil also notes that according to an eyewitness he spoke with, “some were not happy about the role of the PFLP-GC, and some indicated that some fighters at the office in Yarmuk fired at the protesters. Apparently, that resulted in an armed clash and that gun fire can still be heard at this hour.” If armed clashes took place, this suggests there may have been armed men among the protestors and that weapons were not limited to the PFLP-GC guards.

While accounts conflict in regards to who attacked first, it is clear that the PFLP-GC guards were attempting to protect the PFLP-GC headquarters and party officials inside from an angry crowd. This does not justify firing live ammunition into the crowd, nor the killing of the young boy Rami Siyam, of course, but does suggest that the PFLP-GC did not simply open fire on civilians walking in a funeral procession in an effort to crack down on peaceful protests as suggested by the LA Times. Instead, it was a response to a chaotic situation, in which at least two PFLP-GC members also died, and in gruesome fashion. It was also only some of the protestors who were angry enough to attack the Khalsa, not the entire crowd of 30,000. As Bitari noted above, the protestors amassed on Yarmouk Street, which is “about two km long and very wide” and that only “some turned onto the small street where al-Khalsa, the PFLP-GC headquarters, was located” to attack the building.

Nevertheless, this incident would be used by opposition activists to suggest that the PFLP-GC had no legitimacy among Palestinians in the camp and was deliberately killing fellow Palestinians, as if for fun, on behalf of the Syrian government. For example, the pro-opposition Violations Documentation Center (VDC) continued to claim years later that the PFLP-GC killed “more than 20 people” at the funeral “on what was known later as ‘Al Khalsa Massacre.’” This narrative would prove helpful in denigrating later efforts by the PFLP-GC to protect the camp from the December 2012 Nusra and FSA rebel invasion.

Palestinians Strive to Remain Neutral

Palestinians in Syria generally attempted to remain neutral when anti-government protests and armed insurrection against the Syrian state began in tandem in the spring of 2011. The PLO, with the approval of all its factions, followed a policy of “non-involvement of Palestinians and Palestinian camps” to preserve “the secure environment enjoyed by its residents of Palestinians and Syrians, which is free of weapons and armed militants, and the preservation of the Palestinian struggle to focus on Palestine and Jerusalem and in confrontation with our chief enemy, the Israeli occupation.”

Because of this stance, Yarmouk camp was initially spared the violence that soon engulfed many areas of Syria. As a result, the camp became a place of refuge for Syrians fleeing violence elsewhere, in particular from nearby neighborhoods in Damascus and its countryside.

The broad Palestinian consensus to remain neutral resulted in part due to the tragic consequences of past Palestinian involvement in inter-Arab disputes, in particular during the events known as Black September in Jordan, during the civil war in Lebanon, and during the first Gulf War in Iraq. In 1970 in Jordan, the PLO clashed with the Jordanian army after King Hussein felt threatened by the growing strength of PLO guerrillas in the country. Large numbers of Palestinians were killed, and the PLO itself was expelled to Lebanon. After PLO guerillas began taking part in the Lebanese Civil War on the side Muslim and Leftist forces, some 3,000 Palestinians were massacred by Phalangist Christian militias in Tel al-Zataar Palestinian camp in Lebanon in July 1976. The Phalangists enjoyed the support of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who intervened in the civil war on the side of right-wing Christian forces. Palestinians experienced further tragedy when the Kuwaiti government expelled virtually its entire 400,000 strong Palestinian community in retaliation for PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s perceived support of Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War.

More immediately, memory of events in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon caused Palestinians to wish to remain neutral in the Syria conflict. Nahr al-Bared was almost totally destroyed in 2007 after jihadist militants infiltrated the camp, triggering fighting with the Lebanese army. Tens of thousands of camp residents were displaced and left homeless. Unsurprisingly, Palestinians in Yarmouk wished to avoid a similar fate.

The First Demonstrations in Yarmouk

According to Nidal Bitari, the first demonstration in Yarmouk that was directly related to the uprising and directed against the Syrian government occurred on August 17, 2011 and was attended by just 300 or so people. This demonstration was followed by a handful of others in subsequent months, which were even smaller in number and “were mostly staged by displaced Syrians who flooded into the camp in September to flee the fighting in their neighborhoods,” rather than by Palestinians from Yarmouk itself. Bitari describes how a Palestinian millionaire with close ties to the government, Yasir Qashlak, recruited supporters to demonstrate in favor of the government and to “stand outside the mosques after Friday prayers to prevent anti-regime protests.”

A similar phenomenon occurred in the Aydeen Palestinian camp in Homs, in which opposition activists and rebels from neighborhoods adjacent to the camp tried to involve Palestinians in the conflict. Pro-opposition AGPS writes that “The events of Syria eventually reached the [Aydeen] camp because of the displaced Syrian population that were now inside it” and that “Some of the opposition groups proceeded to try and involve the camp in a confrontation with the regime, yet the residents resisted in order to keep the camp neutral.” AGPS describes further how the Palestinian factions in the camp, including Hamas, formed a committee “in order to enter dialogue with the warring parties and to ensure the camp did not become involved in the conflict with the Syrian regime. Public meetings were held to explain the consequential danger if the camp became involved in hostilities. The committee visited families to prevent their children attending the demonstrations. The Committee made deliberate attempts to congregate in front of the mosques after each prayer, in order to prevent demonstrations. A delegation was formed to visit the elders and notables of Shmas area to demand they stop their children coming to the camp to demonstrate. The same committee became the mediator with the official bodies to ensure repairs and recovery from power, water, sanitation and hygiene breakdowns, and to follow up on the situation of detainees with political and security officials. This was a welcome mobilisation, proving popular among residents.” Palestinian efforts to keep rebels out of Aydeen camp ultimately failed, however, foreshadowing what would later occur in Yarmouk. AGPS describes further how “The regime accused the camp’s residents of embracing terrorists and providing them with accommodation,” while “Syrian security forces, slowly started implementing a crackdown on the inhabitants of the camp after armed groups started to emerge.”

Latakia Violence

Controversy regarding Palestinians in Ramel camp in Latakia continued in August 2011, and events there would also foreshadow later events in Yarmouk. Opposition activists claimed that the Syrian navy had bombarded Ramel camp from warships off the coast, and that Syrian security had turned a football stadium in to a mass detention center. These claims were given credibility by a statement issued by United Nations Refugee Works Administration (UNRWA) spokesman Chris Gunness, which stated that the organization was “gravely concerned about reports of heavy gunfire from Syrian security forces into the Palestinian refugee camp situated in the El Ramel district and surrounding areas of Latakia, including heavy fire from gunboats.”

These claims appear to be false, however. Tarek Homoud of AGPS visited Ramel camp at the time and observed that while there was a Syrian army operation against rebels there, the Syrian navy was not bombarding Ramel camp, and that the football stadium was not a mass detention center, but was simply being used to house internally displaced persons fleeing the fighting between the army and rebels. Homoud explains that the “Syrian army sent warning to the residents of the camp to leave. Thousands of its inhabitants left immediately in different directions. The sport city in Latakia city opened its doors to the IDPs [internally displaced persons]. The bombing that took place targeted the Syrian neighborhood and not as what was described officially which was that the Syrian’ armed boats shelled Palestinian camp. Only small parts of the camps were shelled when fighters entered it. This resulted in three persons being killed in the camp. The destruction was limited and some houses were exposed to live bullets.” Journalist Sharmine Narwani also confirmed that Syrian warships had not bombarded the city, explaining that “Three separate sources – two opposition figures from the city and an independent western journalist – later insisted there were no signs of shelling.”

War Comes to Yarmouk

Starting in the spring of 2012, Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels sought to establish a presence in Yarmouk (as they had in Aydeen and Ramel), in an effort to use it as a base for attacks on the capital, dubbing Yarmouk the “gateway to Damascus.”

Even pro-opposition Palestinians rejected rebel wishes to use Yarmouk as a base for military operations, however. For example, one pro-opposition activist from Yarmouk claimed that “The residents of the camp were against the FSA stationing in it. I personally rejected the FSA entering the camp. The camp had a humanitarian role; bringing the war to the middle of it was a mistake. . . . Only the Islamists in the camp were in favor of the FSA stationing in Yarmouk.” Further, while members of the Palestinian faction Fatah “silently despised” the Syrian government (to a large extent for its role in the Tel Zataar massacre during the Lebanese civil war), a Fatah representative nonetheless told Lebanon’s Daily Star that he and others in the party feared “the consequences if Islamists takeover” Yarmouk.

Palestinians were also keen to heed the ominous warnings from the Syrian security officials not to allow rebels to infiltrate the camp. Bitari writes that “In February 2012, for example, at a time when Yarmuk and the Damascus region were still relatively calm, and when the Baba Amro neighborhood of Homs was being razed [sic] by tanks and mortar fire, its entire population having fled, a senior Syrian Security officer pointedly warned one of our factional leaders: ‘Keep Yarmuk quiet, because we don’t like Yarmuk more than we liked Baba Amro.’ It didn’t matter to the government that the majority of Yarmuk’s residents opposed the FSA’s entry, any more than it mattered to the FSA.”

Who are the Truly Moderate Rebels?

It is interesting to note here that Fatah officials and the opposition activist mentioned above viewed the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their supporters as “Islamists.” While the FSA is typically considered as moderate, secular, and fighting for democracy in the Western press, in fact most FSA brigades are Islamists with a specifically Salafist and anti-Alawite sectarian orientation.

For example, Saudi-owned Al-Hayat described how the FSA was first established in July 2011 as a group of army deserters, but then numerous Salafist rebel factions, including Liwa Islam, Saqour al-Sham, Ahfad Rasoul, and Farouq, soon began fighting under the FSA banner. Prominent Israeli-Arab political figure and opposition supporter Azmi Bishara wrote in 2013 that “Islamic jihadist groups were part of the Free Army” and that their “presence aroused significant fear among Syrians,” due to the “spread of black Islamic flags making reference to al-Qaeda, and the appearance of religious sharia courts (see Syria – A Way of Suffering to Freedom, Kindle edition, chapter 9).”

The Daily Star observed that “More than one FSA battalion has named itself after Ibn Taymiyya, the 14th century Sunni Muslim scholar who urged the extermination of Alawites as heretics. This kind of act cancels out any favorable rhetoric or actions by other elements of the FSA, some of whose spokesmen often promise to establish a Syria that is pluralist and civil, and not religious in character.”

The sectarian nature of many FSA battalions is not surprising given that many were armed and funded by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which has a long history of advocating violence against Syria’s Alawites based on Ibn Taymiyya’s rulings. Brotherhood ideologue Said Hawwa, for example, strongly advocated killing Alawites on the basis of their religious identity during the 1979-82 Islamist insurrection against the Syrian state.

This explains the popularity of Adnan Arour, the Saudi-based Syrian Salafi preacher, among many opposition activists and rebels. Arour threatened in June 2011 that “We shall mince [Alawites fighting with the government] in meat grinders and feed their flesh to the dogs.” Then al-Jazeera journalist Nir Rosen noted in March 2012 that Arour’s “name is often chanted in demonstrations” which Arour would address via satellite feed from Saudi Arabia. The Daily Star noted in October 2012 that Arour was embraced by the supposedly moderate FSA rebels, explaining that, “The latest misstep by the opposition was a video issued last week, in which FSA figures announced the unification of Revolutionary Military Councils in a number of major towns. While the rhetoric of the event was primarily nationalistic, the guest of honor at the long dais, flanked by a dozen officers, was Sheikh Adnan Arur, the regime’s favorite target of spite – a hard-line Sunni cleric who has been vicious in his rants against the Alawites.”

One FSA faction that invaded Yarmouk alongside Nusra in December 2012 was the Eagles of the Golan (Nusur al-Jolan). Israeli military officials described the group to the Telegraph as “a radical Salafist faction,” with the Telegraph adding that the group, “made up largely of foreign fighters, including al-Qaeda militants from Iraq, boasts that once it has ousted the Assad regime, it will focus its attention on Israel.” Ironically, the Israeli military later admitted to arming and funding some 12 FSA rebel groups in the southern Syrian areas of the Golan and Deraa starting as early as 2013, making it likely that the Israeli military itself had funded the Eagles of the Golan at least shortly after the group invaded Yarmouk.

Summarizing the rebel scene in September 2014, Nir Rosen observed that “There are no actual moderate insurgents either ideologically or in terms of their actions. Most of the significant fighting forces are Islamists with sectarian agendas, all have committed war crimes, virtually no minorities remain in opposition held areas and dissent is dangerous.”

Rebel Infiltration of Yarmouk

There were some Palestinians, however, who differed from the majority and wished to see a rebel presence in Yarmouk. Bitari writes that in the spring of 2012, a “growing minority of young Palestinian activists had abandoned any pretense of neutrality and were exploring various forms of contact with the opposition. These young people established their own ‘coordinating committee’ specifically to communicate with their Syrian counterparts. Even though they were acting completely on their own, many of us found these contacts very dangerous for the camp’s safety and neutrality. We talked to them many times in an effort to get them to end these contacts. Eventually they did, in late spring 2012, when the FSA began floating the idea of planting car bombs inside the camp to get residents to invite them in for protection. At that point, even these strongly anti-regime young people could not continue the ‘coordination.’ Everyone knew that once the FSA was nearby, tanks and mortars would soon follow.”

The rebels did detonate a car bomb in Yarmouk in March 2012, while also carrying out bombings in Damascus more broadly. The Electronic Intifada notes that “In March, a car exploded in one of the quietest thoroughfares of the camp on the same day that two bombs ripped through downtown Damascus, killing those inside the car.” Al-Jazeera reported that according to Syrian state media, SANA, the bomb in Yarmouk targeted a military bus. The other two bombings that day targeted a customs office and an air force intelligence building. The Syrian Health Minister claimed that 27 people were killed, and 97 wounded, while the BBC reported a higher number of dead, up to 55. The high death toll resulted from the fact rebels detonated the bombs at 7:30 am, during the early Saturday morning rush hour. Opposition activists immediately claimed that the bombings were false flag operations carried out by the government, only to then have Nusra claim responsibility in a video statement.

Rebels Declare War on the Palestine Liberation Army

In addition to seeking ways to infiltrate the camp, rebels also began a campaign of assassinations against Palestinian military leaders and cadre of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) in an effort intimidate Palestinians into withdrawing support for the Syrian government. The Electronic Intifada notes that “In yet more ominous developments, there have been reports of the mysterious killings of Palestine Liberation Army cadres of various ranks — a brigade of the Syrian army in which all Palestinian men in Syria over the age of eighteen are required to carry out military service.”

The Palestine Liberation Army was founded in 1964 as the military wing of the PLO. Brigades of the PLA were created in Gaza, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. All branches of the PLA were later incorporated into the Palestine National Authority (PNA) except for the Syrian branch, which became an all-Palestinian branch of the Syrian army.

Journalist Sharmine Narwani visited Yarmouk and spoke with two PLA commanders, General Hassan Salem and General Nabil Yacoub, who report to head PLA commander Major-General Tariq al-Khadra. Narwani provides an overview of PLA commanders targeted by rebels in the first half of 2012:

“On January 5, Major Basil Amin Ali was assassinated by an unknown assailant in Aarbin – east of Jobar in the Damascus suburbs – while he was fixing his car by the side of the road. Colonel Abdul Nasser Mawqari was shot dead inside Yarmouk the following month, on February 29. A week later, on March 6, Colonel Rida Mohyelddin al-Khadra – a relation of PLA commander, General Khadra – was assassinated in Qatna, 20km south of Damascus, while driving home in his car. On June 5, PLA Brigadier-General Dr. Anwar Mesbah al-Saqaa was killed in Aadawi Street in Damascus by explosives planted in his car, under his seat. He had left his home in Barzeh and was dropping his daughter off at university. Both she and the driver of the car were injured. A few weeks later, on June 26, Colonel Ahmad Saleh Hassan was assassinated in Sahnaya, also in the Damascus suburbs. General Abdul Razzak Suheim, his son, and a soldier guarding them were killed on July 26 in rebel-occupied Yalda.”

The New York Times reported the assassination of PLA commanders Ahmed Salih Hassan and Anwar al-Saqaa as well, noting that “The government says that opposition gunmen killed them because of their role in supporting the Syrian military.” The NYT also reported opposition activist claims that these PLA commanders were being assassinated not by rebels, but by the Syrian government “because they refused to participate in Syrian crackdowns.” The NYT does not mention whether opposition activists provided any evidence to support their claims.

These claims appear hollow, however, as rebels publicly declared their desire to target pro-government Palestinian leaders just 17 days after the NYT report. The Daily Star reported on July 18, 2012 that “In a statement issued on Monday night, the FSA’s joint command warned that pro-regime Palestinian leaders on Syrian soil were ‘legitimate targets.’” Further, Palestine’s Ambassador to Syria, Anwar Abdul-Hadi attributed the killings to the rebels, explaining that “Rebels killed some PLA officers to force Palestinians to help the Syrian revolution – to intimidate them. And they blamed the Syrian army. The target of this crisis is the Palestinian case. They think when they occupy Palestinian camps in Syria and divide them, they will forget Palestine.” An unnamed Palestinian official speaking to Saudi-owned al-Sharq al-Awsat in March 2012 similarly stated that these assassinations were an effort on the part of the rebels to drag the Palestinian camps into an internal Syrian issue in which “we have no interest. . . we requested of them that they leave us out of this game.”

Rebel Assassination Campaign

Rebel efforts to assassinate pro-government Palestinian leaders would also fit with broader US plans to help rebels carry out assassinations in an effort to de-stabilize the Syrian government as a whole. Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor detail such a strategy. One Stratfor analyst learned in a meeting with Pentagon planners in December 2011 that Western governments had Special Operations (SOF) teams on the ground in Syria already at that time in an effort to train opposition forces, in the hope of fostering “guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns” and to “try to break the back of the Alawite forces, [to] elicit collapse from within.” As mentioned above, the first assassinations of PLA commanders occurred shortly after this time, in January 2012.

Evidence of such an assassination campaign comes from Amnesty International, which documented efforts by the Nusra Front and FSA affiliated brigades to kill government informants (real or imagined) in Damascus and its suburbs, stretching back even further, to June 2011. Amnesty cited a relief worker involved in transporting the dead and wounded in the Damascus suburb of Douma as describing how “In July and August 2011, one man was ‘executed’ around every two weeks… We would go and pick them up. The most common reason given for the killings was that the victim served as an informer for the security. The number of those ‘executed’ gradually increased to one every week, then two or three every week. By July 2012, three to four people were being ‘executed’ every day, and we stopped knowing the exact accusation. People just referred to them as informers.”

Amnesty notes as well that “Ali al-Zamel, a Palestinian refugee accused by armed opposition groups of acting as an informer for the Syrian authorities, was abducted in July 2012 and killed around five days later” and that his body was dumped in the “hole of death,“ a 15m long, 6m wide and 5-7m deep hole dug for the foundations of a building in an area south of al-Tadhamon, near Yarmouk, which “was apparently used by armed opposition groups to dump bodies of people they had summarily killed. Residents frequently checked the hole . . . to see if further bodies had been dumped there.”

In November 2012, the well-known Syrian-Palestinian actor Mohammed Rafeh was assassinated by rebels in the Damascus suburb of Barzeh. According to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Rafeh “was killed for apparently giving information to the regime about rebels and antigovernment protesters.” The Boston Globe notes however that “Mr. Rafeh’s death comes after a campaign began on social media calling for actors who support Syrian President Bashar Assad to be punished,” suggesting that Rafeh was assassinated simply for his outspoken public criticism of the rebels.

False Flag Murders

In many cases, opposition activists promoted conspiracy theories claiming that the government was responsible for assassinations actually carried out by rebels. Opposition supporter Azmi Bishara noted that in Homs, opposition activists accused the Syrian government of assassinating a number of prominent civilians during the summer of 2011, when in fact it was known the rebels were responsible. He provides as examples the head of the chest surgery division of the National Hospital, Hassan Eid (Alawite, killed on August 34, 2011), the deputy director of the faculty of chemistry in Homs University, Na’il al-Dakhil (Christian, killed 26 September, 2011), the vice dean of the faculty of architecture in the Ba’ath University in Homs, Muhammad Ali Aqil (Shiite, also killed 26 September, 2011), and the nuclear engineer Aws Abd al-Kareem Khalil (Alawite, killed September 28, 2011). Bishara notes that while the above mentioned men had participated in a national dialogue organized by the Syrian government [dialogue with the government was anathema to the rebels], the men had nevertheless rejected Syrian government efforts to end the crisis militarily (via a “security solution”) and had demanded real democratic reforms. Despite this, rebels assassinated them anyway. Bishara also notes that opposition activists justified passing unconfirmed, exaggerated, and fabricated information of this kind (falsely blaming the Syrian government) to the media because of their belief that it “served the revolution” (see Syria – A Way of Suffering to Freedom, Kindle edition, Chapter 11).

When Hamas operative Kamal Husni Ghanaja was found dead in his home outside Damascus in late June 2012, the Syrian opposition immediately claimed that a “pro-government Shabiha militia tortured Ghanaja to death and ‘set his house on fire to destroy the evidence of their heinous crime’ and that a ‘pro-regime militia called Shabiha has been entering Palestinian refugee camps under the guise of ‘safeguarding the camps’ but they ‘commit murder and engage in kidnapping.’” It is unclear why the Syrian government would wish to kill Ghanaja, who must have had close ties to Syrian intelligence, given that he “was involved in smuggling arms from Iran to Gaza,” according to Israeli intelligence. Opposition claims that the Syrian government killed Ghanaja were proven false when a Hamas spokesperson indicated one week later that, “An internal investigation indicated brother Ghanaja died because of the smoke coming from a generator he used in his house … he was not murdered.”

In perhaps the most notable case of the entire war, rebels murdered a young illiterate man with a clubbed hand named Ibrahim Qashoush in July 2011, claiming he was an informer. Qashoush worked as a security guard at the local fire department in Hama. Rebels slit Qashoush’s throat and dumped his body in the Orontes River. Opposition activists from the Local Coordinating Committee (LCC) in Hama then used photos of his body to claim Qashoush had actually been a non-violent demonstrator famous for writing songs sung in local anti-government protests, and alleged the Syrian government had murdered him and ripped out his vocal chords as punishment for his songs. In reality, however, the protest singer was another man, Abdul Rahman Farhood, who is still alive and living as a refugee in Europe, as journalist James Harkin confirms in a long piece published in GQ Magazine. One Syrian human rights investigator acknowledged to Harkin that “Some of the opposition were telling lies [about Qashoush] because they thought it would be helpful. It was because of this that I fell out with them.” The false claim that the Syrian government killed Qashoush did help the revolution, according to Harkin, as Qashoush’s slaying became a “rallying point for protesters” in Hama, who considered him “the nightingale of the revolution.”

Opposition efforts to falsely blame the Syrian government for atrocities over the years have apparently led to skepticism among many Syrians in regard to opposition media in general. Lina Shaikhouni, a journalist on the Arabic Team at BBC Monitoring, observes that “more Syrians watch government-controlled TV than any opposition channel because of the lack of trust. . . There are people who are producing ‘fake news’ [on the rebel side] who are hurting the credibility of the revolution.”

Given the rebel assassination campaign which was proceeding apace in the summer of 2012, and the opposition practice of blaming the government for killings actually carried out by the rebels, and the threats made by FSA leaders against pro-government Palestinians, there is every reason to believe that rebels were killing PLA commanders during this period and that opposition claims that these officers were killed by the government because they “refused to crackdown” on protestors were fabricated by opposition activists for public relations reasons.

PLA Conscripts Massacred

Sharmine Narwani further describes rebel efforts to target Palestinians from the Palestine Liberation Army. On July 11, 2013 news broke that rebels had “kidnapped and killed 14 Palestinian soldiers heading back to Nairab camp on a weekend break from training exercises in Mesiaf, 48km southwest of Hama. According to the PLA generals I interviewed, the soldiers were divided into two groups – half were shot, while the other half were tortured and then beheaded. Many Palestinians I interviewed told the story of the driver of the PLA van – who was not a soldier himself. Ahmad Ezz was a young man from the Nairab camp in Aleppo. The rebels spared him – temporarily – then strapped him into a vehicle rigged with massive explosives, and ordered him to drive into a Syrian army checkpoint. According to multiple Arabic news reports, at the very last minute, Ahmad veered sharply away from the checkpoint. The rebels detonated the explosives and Ahmad died, but by changing course he spared the Syrian soldiers. In what perhaps speaks to Palestinian sentiment about the Syrian conflict more than many of the ‘contested’ incidents, the residents of Nairab camp turned out en masse for Ahmad’s funeral. Says Mohammad, a young Palestinian whose family lives outside Yarmouk in one of the neighboring suburbs – and who first told me the story of Ahmad – ‘We saw him as a hero for saving the [Syrian] soldiers.”’

Saudi-owned al-Sharq al-Awsat interviewed a local youth from Neirab camp, who gave further details, explaining “the soldiers were kidnapped two weeks ago during their return from military service in a convoy on the road from Msaif in Hama province, and we didn’t hear any news from them from that time on, until their bodies were found, dumped on the side of the road” and he added that “most of the victims lived in Neirab camp.”

Al-Sharq al-Awsat also quoted an opposition activist who, while denying that the rebels killed the PLA conscripts, nevertheless implied their deaths were justified by claiming that “the Assad regime wants to include the Palestinians in their conflict with the Syrian people through turning them into Shabiha, and this is what [the regime] relied on in Neirab camp where it exploited the economic situation of the Palestinian youth and pushed them to participate in acts of repression in exchange for money.” This claim is not credible given that the massacred Palestinian youths had not joined the PLA for money, but were conscripted as was legally required, and had not participated in the conflict up until that time.

Other opposition activists claimed that the PLA conscripts were killed by the Syrian government, supposedly to “send out a warning message” to Syria’s Palestinian community. The account of the PLA commanders interviewed by Narwani was inadvertently confirmed, however, by journalist Tarek Homoud of the pro-opposition AGPS. While claiming that the killers of the PLA conscripts were unknown, Homoud nevertheless acknowledges that “a burned body of a bus driver was found two days after the killing of the [PLA] recruits” at the site of the check point attack (in an area called Rikarda) and that rebel groups Saqour al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham had taken credit for the attack via video uploaded to YouTube. In the video, a truck bomb is shown exploding as it approaches the target and rebels announce the attack was carried out in retaliation for the so-called Tremseh massacre (discussed below). One month later, C.J. Chivers of the New York Times documented another instance of FSA rebels in Aleppo attempting to use a captured pro-government fighter as an “unwitting suicide bomber” in the same manner.

If the Syrian government was responsible for the kidnapping and killing of the PLA recruits, it would not be possible for rebels to have forced the conscripts’ bus driver to drive the truck bomb attacking the Syrian Army checkpoint at Rikarda, and for his burned body to be found at the scene. More obviously, it does not make sense for the Syrian government to kill its own Palestinian supporters, as claimed by opposition activists. Instead, rebels targeted the PLA recruits as part of a broader assassination campaign targeting pro-government Palestinians, which is consistent with public threats made by the FSA leadership, as noted above.

Despite this, AGPS would later claim directly that the government had killed the PLA conscripts, alleging that rebels found photographs of the corpses of two of the young conscripts when raiding a government criminal security branch in Idlib in early 2015. AGPS claims such photographs provide proof the Syrian government had tortured and killed them.

This is an odd assumption to make, given that Syrian police would likely take photographs of the corpses upon their discovery as part of any criminal investigation into the killings. Documenting war time deaths in this way would simply be routine. During the height of the sectarian civil war in Iraq in 2005, for example, the New York Times reports that “A small window in the [Baghdad] morgue is the last hope for people looking for their dead. Holding photographs of the missing, they peer through it to a computer screen where a worker flashes pictures of all the bodies no one has claimed. . . Some bodies are eventually found by their families, but most languish in the morgue. They are given numbers and, after two months, buried in unmarked graves in two Baghdad cemeteries.”

Funerals Again Become Protests

Amidst the war of rumors about which side carried out the massacre of the PLA conscripts, Palestinians in Yarmouk organized a demonstration on Thursday July 12, 2013 to express anger about the killings. Al-Akhbar reports that Syrian security forces and PFLP-GC militants opened fire on the crowd in an effort to control the protests, allegedly killing 9 people. Al-Akhbar quotes a protestor who alleged that Syrian security forces “aimed at the heads and chests of protesters, shooting to kill.” Al-Akhbar also quotes a Yarmouk resident who attended the demonstration as saying, “We don’t know who started firing first, but with our own eyes we saw the firing gradually increase, leading to the death and injury of tens of protesters. Afraid of getting injured, I dropped to the ground,” suggesting there once again may have been armed men among the crowd, and making it unclear which side initiated the shooting. Al-Akhbar also quotes a member of the PFLP who claimed that “we cannot prevent our Syrian brothers who live in al-Hajar al-Aswad or al-Tadamon or other neighborhoods [adjacent to Yarmouk] from protesting peacefully in the camp. At the end of the day, this is their land and we are guests here. . . I have verified information that the Syrian youth in al-Hajar al-Aswad succeeded in exploiting the fervor and rage of the youth in the camp, turning the protest last Thursday over the death of 17 PLA soldiers into an anti-Syrian regime protest.”

This led opposition activists to organize another protest in Yarmouk the following day, Friday July 13, to continue protesting the deaths of the PLA conscripts. The New York Times reported that “A small anti-Assad demonstration in Yarmouk on July 13 turned violent when Syrian troops fired into the crowd.” A pro-Fatah website (Sawt Fatah) reported that “hundreds participated in a peaceful march” which was blocked at a PFLP-GC checkpoint. An argument broke out, after which the protesters “were fired upon from several sides, forcing the people to scramble to escape.” The Fatah source also claimed that government “snipers targeted the activists of the march, which led to the death of four youth from the camp, including the child Yazen Naser al-Khadra [15 years old according to some sources], Dhia Muhammad, Anas al-Bara’i and Hani al-Kharma.” The source claimed further that the marchers “did not raise slogans against the regime, but were expressing their anger at being so often targeted by all the warring parties in Syria, without knowing by whose hands.” Tarek Homoud of AGPS also claims four deaths, and describes how “All the protests came to an end peacefully, except one in Palestine Street. The Syrian army opened fire against protestors leaving Four Palestinians dead; this caused some opposition fighters to intervene resulting in confrontations that lasted a day.”

The growing unrest in Yarmouk at this time led Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi to write on his Facebook page that “The hardest thing is to have the most honored and distinguished guests in your country [Palestinians] . . . and to see some of them not respect the origins of this hospitality,” and that if they fail to do so, “let them go to the ‘oases of democracy’ in the Arab countries.”

The protests and clashes continued the next day as well, on Saturday July 14, with al-Sharq al-Awsat citing an opposition activist in Yarmouk claiming that FSA rebels had closed entrances to Yarmouk with burning tires, and had raised the flag of the Syrian revolution above several buildings in the camp. The Saturday protests were in response to events from the day before, in particular the killing of the young boy Yazen Naser al-Khadra, who opposition activists claimed had been shot by a sniper with two bullets to the head, as well as in response to an alleged massacre in the town of Tremseh, in Hama province, that occurred two days before, on Thursday July 12.

The Tremseh “Massacre”

Opposition activists claimed to Der Spiegel that the Syrian army had “murdered more than 220 men, women and children” in Tremseh and that “Some were reportedly killed by shelling from the Syrian army, while others were killed by pro-government thugs from nearby villages” while the New York Times quoted opposition activists as claiming that the killings in Tremseh were “unlike any massacre that has previously occurred in Syria.”

It soon became apparent that opposition claims of a massacre in Tremseh were false and that the government account of events there was correct. The Syrian government had claimed the violence in Tremseh “was not a massacre, but a military operation targeting armed fighters who had taken control of the village.” This view was confirmed when UN observers visited Tremseh on Saturday July 14 and issued a report stating that the Syrian army did attack the village, but appeared to target “specific groups and houses, mainly of army defectors and activists.” The New York Times noted that the pro-opposition SOHR “had been able to confirm only 103 names [rather than 220 as claimed by the opposition], and 90 percent of them were young men. There were no women’s names on the list of 103 victims obtained from activists in Homs,” further confirming the government claim that it targeted rebels in the attack.

Operation Damascus Volcano and Syrian Earthquake

On Saturday, 14 July 2012 (the same day that protests raged in Yarmouk and the correct details of events in Tremseh emerged), the rebels also launched a large offensive to take Damascus, dubbed operation “Damascus Volcano and Syrian Earthquake,” which was made possible by weapons shipments organized by US planners two months before. In May 2012, the Washington Post had reported that “Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States, according to opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials.” The Post noted further that “Materiel is being stockpiled in Damascus” and that according to an opposition figure, “Large shipments have got through. . . Some areas are loaded with weapons.’”

Reuters notes that the July 14 offensive began when rebels attacked Syrian security forces in the Hajar al-Aswad district of southern Damascus, which is adjacent to and south of Yarmouk. The operation involved 2,500 rebel fighters, many of which were redeployed from other parts of the country. The fighting spread to three other districts the next day, including the Midan district in the heart of Damascus, with battles flaring within sight of Assad’s presidential palace. Rebels hid in narrow alleyways and battled government tanks using rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs. The offensive was highlighted by the rebel bombing of the National Security building in Damascus on July 18, which killed 4 top Syrian security officials, including the defense minister Dawoud Rajha, national security chief Hisham Ikhtiyar, and Assad’s brother-in-law, deputy defense minister Assef Shawkat. The New York Times noted that “The attack on the leadership’s inner sanctum as fighting raged in sections of the city for the fourth day suggested that the uprising had reached a decisive moment in the overall struggle for Syria. The battle for the capital, the center of Assad family power, appears to have begun.” Rebels claimed the bombing was “a turning point in Syria’s history” and the “beginning of the end” for the government. One rebel commander was more cautious,however, suggesting that “It is more ebb and flow; these skirmishes are just a test as our fighters infiltrate then withdraw. . . The Free Syrian Army has a hit-and-run strategy. This is urban warfare. It favors the rebel forces and not the conventional forces.” The Syrian army was able to repel the offensive, re-taking control of the Midan district on July 20, 2012. However, the rebel withdrawal from the heart of Damascus was merely tactical and rebels would try to take the capital again in coming months. Al-Monitor reports that “The regime appears to have won Round 1 in the fight for Damascus, but the war is far from over.”

Neutrality Falls Apart

This is also when reports first emerged of Palestinians with the PFLP-GC fighting with the Syrian Army, as well as of reports of Palestinians fighting with the rebels. On July 18, the Daily Star quoted an opposition activist known as Abu al-Sakan as claiming that “Many Palestinian youth have joined the FSA, and they are fighting side by side with the Syrian revolutionaries in the Tadamon and Al-Hajar Al-Aswad districts.” The Guardian noted on July 20, 2012 that a source in Yarmouk “said members of the Free Syrian Army were fighting tanks in the area and trying to prevent the security forces from entering. But they have been overrun after Palestinian factions, close to the regime, sided with the government troops.”

The fighting in these districts caused a massive influx of displaced persons into areas viewed as neutral and safe, such as Yarmouk and also the nearby Khan al-Sheih Palestinian camp. Those fleeing the violence were graciously hosted by camp residents, whether in UNRWA schools, mosques or private homes. Al-Akhbar reported that the common feeling among the displaced was one of sadness mixed with anger: “Says Abu Muhammad, the father of four children, ‘we are not guilty of anything but wanting to live in peace, far away from the game of the current war. My house lies in the Hajr al-Aswad area and missiles destroyed it, and I was hit by shrapnel in my hand, and I also broke three ribs in my chest. I still can’t remember the details of leaving Hajr al-Aswad and arriving at this school with my family.’”

Yarmouk did not remain safe for long, however. Fighting spilled over into the camp more and more during July. Civilians lived in fear, often not knowing whether the bombs falling on their homes were from the hands of the rebels or the Syrian army. One elderly Yarmouk resident described how when he had once fought as a guerilla for the PLO against Israel, Palestinians had had a clear enemy. However, “if I am now killed in my home, I will not know the source of the bullet or missile or who fired it. We are living in a dirty and frustrating time now.”

One Fatah supporter emphasized his party’s efforts to remain neutral during this period, while also acknowledging the risks of doing so: “Palestinians have also paid the price of Arab countries’ struggles for decades. So most Fatah supporters are trying to stay on the fence. . . But it is difficult because even if they do not go to the revolt, the revolt is coming to them.”

Jibril Arms the Popular Committees

In the wake of the July rebel offensive on Damascus and increased fighting in neighborhoods adjacent to Yarmouk, the PFLP-GC leadership was keenly aware of the threat of a jihadist rebel takeover of the camp, and argued that remaining neutral was no longer a viable option. Ahmed Jibril began distributing weapons to several hundred of his PFLP-GC supporters in Yarmouk to create “popular committees,” in an effort “to defend the Palestinian refugee camps against the free army.” The popular committees comprised about 500 men from a variety of Palestinian factions, excluding Hamas.

Al-Akhbar notes however, that many Palestinians in the camp opposed these actions because they considered “the participation of supporters of Ahmed Jibril in preserving the security of the camp a clear violation of the agreement made by all factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in the beginning of the events in Syria, which declared that all Palestinian resistance factions refrain from engaging in the internal Syrian conflict and remain committed to neutrality.”

Anwar Raja, the PFLP-GC’s media director, was unapologetic about arming the popular committees however, feeling it was a necessary measure, despite opposition from the other Palestinian factions. Raja explained that, “We warned Palestinians in 2011 and 2012 about rebels coming to occupy Yarmouk, and increased these calls as rebels took control of surrounding areas in Tadamoun, Hajar al-Aswad, Yalda. We said the groups should arm themselves in defense of the camp, but they ignored us.”

During this time, al-Akhbar reports that a group of Yarmouk businessmen also sent a delegation to the Damascus police chief to request that walking police patrols be established to protect the camp from rebels, the cost of which these businessmen offered to pay from their own pockets, and that rebels assaulted the Damascus police headquarters later that same evening, killing all the officers present. Al-Jazeera reported on the attack as well, claiming that rebels killed and injured tens of security men and “shabiha” (pro-government thugs) during the assault, while also capturing the weapons cache inside.

Pro-opposition Palestinians began to accuse the popular committees themselves of constituting “shabiha.” Al-Arab quoted some Palestinian refugees from Yarmouk as calling on the UN, rights groups and the PLO to “save them from the shabiha of the Syrian regime and its snipers.”

One member of a local humanitarian group, the Jafra Foundation, described how the neutrality of the camp slowly fell apart during this period: “The Palestinian camps were a safe haven for internally displaced persons and for the wounded, especially in Yarmouk camp. Now, this wasn’t appreciated by either side – the Assad regime or the opposition. The opposition wanted us to participate more in protests and militias and side with them. At the same time, the regime used the same logic – they accused us of allowing ‘terrorists’ to enter the camps and of not fighting with the Syrian regime, which, they say, was always with us and supported our rights. This confusion from the two sides also found its voice within the Palestinian people. Some people began to participate in demonstrations and [rebel] military actions. On the regime side, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command and Fatah al-Intifada began to recruit for Assad. In the beginning, the idea was just to protect the camps. That changed.”

The Ramadan Massacre

It was in this context that two mortars landed in Yarmouk on 2 August 2012, tearing into a busy street during the height of Ramadan celebrations, killing twenty. Al-Akhbar quoted an eyewitness to the bombing as stating that “A state of terror and chaos filled the place after the first bomb fell. We immediately tried to help the injured. After only two minutes the second bomb fell in the same place, which caused a large number of dead and injured.” Saudi-owned al-Sharq al-Awsat reported claims from the local representative of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) that the “massacre that was committed was intentional,” because three shells (rather than two, as reported by other sources) fell “within two minutes in the same place within Ja’una Street in the camp” and that “We have verified the source of the shells and found they were fired from the site of regime artillery on Qasioun mountain above the Republican Palace.” According to al-Sharq al-Awsat, the Syrian Army supposedly carried out the massacre because of the “dissatisfaction of the Syrian regime with the Palestinian movement, especially after the uprising of the camp, and the support it presented to oppressed Syrian families” displaced due to fighting in nearby neighborhoods such as al Tadhamon, Hajer al-Aswad, Yalda and Qa’aa.

Despite opposition and PCHR claims that the Syrian government was responsible, the New York Times reported that, “Details surrounding the attack suggest it may not be that simple,” suggesting that the rebels may have carried out the attack in retaliation for PLFP-GC efforts to arm the popular committees. The NYT quoted one spokesperson for a local Palestinian opposition group who described Jibril’s efforts to distribute weapons as “provocative,” while the NYT also noted that “the blasts appear to have hit near the office of a faction that was distributing weapons, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command. A well-placed opposition activist who declined to be identified publicly because of political considerations said the bombings might have been the work of rebels who had aimed for that office but missed.”

Such a view seems reasonable given that the Free Syrian Army had a few weeks earlier declared that pro-government Palestinian leaders were legitimate targets, as mentioned above. This, on top of Jibril’s efforts to distribute weapons, could easily have prompted rebels to target the PFLP-GC headquarters in retaliation. Further, if the Syrian government did wish to retaliate against Palestinians broadly for their supposed support of the opposition, as al-Sharq al-Awsat claims, it would still not make sense for the Syrian army to bomb areas of Yarmouk under the control of its own allies (areas near the PFLP-GC headquarters), which allies had just begun to fight actively on the side of the government, and upon whom the Syrian army would rely heavily in coming months to try to prevent rebels from capturing the camp. Indeed, Maan reports that a mortar shell struck the PFLP-GC headquarters two days later, on August 4, causing “serious material damage” but no casualties. Strangely, Maan’s sources in Yarmouk also claim the Syrian army fired the mortar, but again this would not make sense, as the Syrian army would not attack the very headquarters of its own Palestinian allies. More likely, rebels targeted the PFLP-GC headquarters on August 2, missed, and accidentally killed 20 people. Rebels then attempted to hit the headquarters a second time two days later, and were successful, while blaming the Syrian government in both instances.

Abdul-Hadi of the PLO also seemed to view the August 2 bombing as rebel retaliation for Jibril’s arming of the popular committees, as he felt that Jibril’s actions had brought disaster to Yarmouk. Maan quotes Abdul-Hadi as saying “The Yarmouk camp has not witnessed any tough events since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria, except in the last two months. The latest event was yesterday when 20 people were killed and about 65 were injured . . . Thursday’s attack came after Jibril armed some men in the camp under the pretext of protecting the Palestinians. . . . We reject this completely because our protection is the responsibility of the state of Syria, and we are only guests there [emphasis mine].”

Importantly, opposition activists viewed the alleged killing of Palestinians by the government as positive, as it would supposedly help break the bond between the Palestinians and the Syrian government, causing them to come to the opposition’s side and end their neutral stance. The New York Times describes how “Trying to break that bond has been a primary goal of the opposition” and that “Other activists blamed the government [for the August 2 bombing] although they acknowledged that they wanted to draw the Palestinians into the conflict.” The NYT quotes an opposition activist as saying “Let [the Palestinians] show the world how they don’t want to get involved after many of them were killed by Assad,” revealing the disdain that many in the opposition felt towards Palestinians for their attempts to remain neutral. This resembled rebel anger at residents of Aleppo during the same period for their lack of support for the “revolution.” Journalist James Foley (later kidnapped and murdered by ISIS) related in October 2012 how one rebel commander promised that “Aleppo would burn” because its residents, also majority Sunni like the rebels, were only “concerned with their barbecues.”

The bond between Palestinians and the Syrian government proved difficult to break, however. The New York Times reported in late June 2012 that “Syria prides itself on being one of the few Arab countries to offer Palestinians full civil rights. They can own property and hold government jobs, for instance. ‘It is hard for us to forget that Syria deals with us as ordinary citizens,’ said Abu Mohammad, 40, another refugee, who runs a candy store in the Yarmouk camp. ‘If Assad is gone, no Arab or foreign state will host us,’ he said. ‘We want to live in peace and look after our sons, not to live in tents again.’”

The Storm before the Storm

The fighting that began in Yarmouk in the summer of 2012 intensified further in the fall. In late October 2012, the FSA brigade known as the Falcons of the Golan (Suqour al-Golan) announced the formation of the Storm Brigade (Liwa al-Asifah), made up of all Palestinian rebels, specifically for the purpose of fighting pro-government Palestinian cadre of the PFLP-GC and the popular committees. A rebel commander declared to Reuters that, “Now they are targets for us, targets for all the FSA. All of them with no exceptions,” while Maan cited rebels who claimed the Storm Brigade was created to “to wrest control of Damascus’ Yarmouk refugee camp.” On November 5, the New York Times quoted an activist as describing that “It’s a real war. . . Explosions, bombing and gunfire, and of course the helicopters, which have become part of the sky in Damascus now, like birds” and that five people were killed when a minibus in Yarmouk was targeted by small artillery fired by an unknown group. On November 7, Reuters reports that Syrian rebels killed 10 PFLP-GC fighters in clashes near Street 30 in Yarmouk and in Hajar al-Aswad. On November 23, al-Akhbar reports that “Four people were killed and a PFLP-GC activist was seriously wounded when a bomb planted under a car went off, the group said, blaming the rebel Free Syrian Army for the attack.” The chaotic nature of events during this period was described by a Yarmouk resident named Abu Majd who explained that “Whenever I have tried to leave my home, I have encountered militants in the streets. I do not know whether they belong to the FSA or the popular committees that answer to Ahmad Jibril [of the PFLP-GC], or even the Syrian army or security forces.”

Damascus as a whole was in chaos during this period, as rebel suicide and car bomb attacks on government targets had “become a near daily reality in the capital Damascus,” according to the Telegraph, with al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, the Nusra Front, playing an increasingly prominent role. Reuters reported for example that “Nusra claimed responsibility in one day alone last month [November 2012] for 45 attacks in Damascus, Deraa, Hama and Homs provinces that reportedly killed dozens, including 60 in a single suicide bombing.”

At the same time, foreign jihadists continued to enter Syria to fight for Nusra. One Nusra member who helped smuggle fighters and weapons into Syria from Lebanon explained to the Telegraph that “Some of the foreign fighters hate the west and all non-Muslims. . . They want to attack churches. Personally, I don’t like this. But this is how they were taught in Iraq and Chechnya.” The same Nusra member added that he had smuggled in jihadist fighters from “Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkmenistan, France and even from Britain.”

Opposition Conspiracy Theories

By this time it was becoming clear that Nusra as an organization was also deeply embedded within the broader US and Saudi-backed “moderate” FSA rebel brigades, a fact which had previously been obscured, thanks to conspiracy theories promoted by the Syrian opposition. In December 2012, just weeks before Nusra and FSA brigades invaded Yarmouk, McClatchy reported that “When the group Jabhat al Nusra first claimed responsibility for car and suicide bombings in Damascus that killed dozens last January [2012], many of Syria’s revolutionaries claimed that the organization was a creation of the Syrian government,” however, “it is increasingly clear that [Nusra’s] operations are closely coordinated with more secular rebels. Some Syrians say that Nusra’s importance is a result of the West’s failure to support those secular rebels. But the closeness of the coordination between Nusra and other rebels makes it difficult to support one without empowering the other.” McClatchy notes further that Nusra has “proved to be critical to the rebels’ military advance. In battle after battle across the country, Nusra and similar groups do the heaviest frontline fighting. Groups who call themselves the Free Syrian Army and report to military councils led by defected Syrian army officers move into the captured territory afterward.” One Nusra fighter explained to Reuters during this time the reason for such close cooperation: “Our aim is to depose Assad, defend our people against the military crackdown and build the caliphate. Many in the Free Syrian Army have ideas like us and want an Islamic state.”

When the US State Department designated Nusra as a terrorist group in December 2012, Moaz al-Khatib, the leader of the main political opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNCROF) immediately objected, suggesting the decision should be “reviewed” and that “We might disagree with some parties and their ideas and their political and ideological vision. But we affirm that all the guns of the rebels are aimed at overthrowing the tyrannical criminal regime.” The Telegraph also reported at the time that “a total of 29 opposition groups including fighting ‘brigades’ and civilian committees, have signed a petition calling for mass demonstrations in support of Jabhat al-Nusra” and that the petition promoted “the slogan ‘No to American intervention, for we are all Jabhat al-Nusra’ and urges supporters to ‘raise the Jabhat al-Nusra flag’ as a ‘thank you.’” Consequently, FSA brigades have proven largely indistinguishable from Nusra in many of the most important battles of the Syria conflict, including in Yarmouk.

Timber Sycamore

The fighting in October and November was just the prelude to a larger rebel effort to take Damascus in December 2012. As a part of a program code-named Timber Sycamore, CIA planners accelerated weapons shipments to Syrian rebels during this period, primarily via partners in Saudi intelligence, and began to train rebels directly at camps in Jordan starting in October 2012. McClatchy reports that one rebel participant in the training program “said men he believed were American intelligence officers observed what was taking place. Another said he believed British officers were helping to organize the training. The training itself was handled by Jordanian military officers, the rebels said. By November [2012], another rebel said, the training had expanded to anti-tank weapons and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.” The LA Times reported that rebels from Damascus were among those receiving training, and that “CIA officials declined to comment on the secret training programs, which was being done covertly in part because of U.S. legal concerns about publicly arming the rebels, which would constitute an act of war against the Assad government.”

The New York Times reported of this period that “With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment” which “expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year [2012], the data shows. . . Most of the cargo flights have occurred since November [2012], after the presidential election in the United States.” The NYT quotes Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute who notes the massive amounts of weaponry rebels received. Griffiths explains that “A conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3,500 tons of military equipment. . . The intensity and frequency of these flights. . . are suggestive of a well-planned and coordinated clandestine military logistics operation.” The NYT indicates further that “arms and equipment were being purchased by Saudi Arabia in Croatia and flown to Jordan on Jordanian cargo planes for rebels working in southern Syria” and “formed what one former American official who was briefed on the program called ‘a cataract of weaponry.’”

The New York Times also reported of this period that, according to US officials, the bulk of these weapons shipments were going to “hard-line Islamic Jihadists.” US officials at the same time claimed incompetence, suggesting that the military assistance reaching the rebels via its own partners in Saudi and Qatari intelligence and under the supervision of the CIA, was somehow reaching exactly those rebel groups “we don’t want to have it.” Such statements, while patently false, seemed to be an effort on the part of US officials to establish plausible deniability, given that they were overseeing the shipment of weapons to Nusra, an official al-Qaeda affiliate, which would clearly be illegal under US law.

One FSA commander told the Washington Post that these weapons shipments were part of an effort to “shift the focus of the war away from the north toward the south and the capital, Assad’s stronghold,” while another noted rebel commander, Saleh al-Hamwi, indicated that “The shift was prompted by the realization that rebel gains across the north of the country over the past year were posing no major threat to the regime in Damascus” and that weapons shipments would flow through Jordan into Syria because the “province of Daraa [in southern Syria] controls a major route to the capital and is far closer.” Al-Hamwi adds that “Daraa and Damascus are the key fronts on the revolution, and Damascus is where it is going to end.”

Though rebels had succeeded in penetrating the heart of the capital during the July 2012 offensive “Operation Damascus Volcano,” they had nevertheless failed to hold territory and could only engage in hit-and-run attacks. The Syrian army was then able to force a rebel retreat. Reuters reported that according to one rebel commander, the July 2012 offensive failed because it had been disorganized and lacked proper re-supply lines.

If rebels were to succeed in taking Damascus, better supply lines therefore needed to be established, and Yarmouk, located in the southern suburbs of Damascus, was crucial for this effort. Yarmouk is bordered to the south by the town of Hajar al-Aswad, a rebel stronghold that itself is bordered to the south by the Damascus countryside, and easily reachable from Deraa. If rebels from the FSA and Nusra could capture Yarmouk, this would help in establishing a reliable supply-line stretching from Jordan all the way to Damascus, and keep the US and Gulf-supplied weapons flowing for another major offensive on the capital.

Zero Hour

Nidal Bitari, the pro-opposition activist and journalist from Yarmouk mentioned above, notes that Yarmouk’s residents were aware of the coming rebel assault, not only on Damascus, but on Yarmouk as well. He notes that “The FSA, by that time joined by the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra, had long set their sights on Yarmuk camp as the ‘gateway to Damascus.’ Since the autumn of 2012, they had been talking more and more openly about the ‘zero hour’ for liberating Damascus, and everyone knew that Yarmuk was the intended launching pad. . . And with the PFLP-GC now fighting the rebels outside the camp, the FSA could claim that the camp’s neutrality had ended and use that as an excuse to go in.”

PFLP-GC officials allege that then director of Saudi Intelligence and former ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, was the chief planner of the assault on Yarmouk. This seems reasonable given the role of Saudi Intelligence in organizing weapons shipments to the rebels on behalf of the CIA during this period, and given that, according to a leaked National Security Agency (NSA) document, Bandar was personally giving orders to rebels to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the Damascus airport with missiles just three months later. Bandar’s efforts to arm jihadist rebels in Syria mirrored his previous efforts to help US officials in the Reagan administration arm Nicaraguan insurgents ( Contras) in the 1980’s, in an attempt to de-stabilize the Nicaraguan (Sandinista) government, while also mirroring Bandar’s role in helping CIA officials arm and train jihadist rebels (mujahedeen) traveling to fight in Afghanistan against Soviet forces during the same period.

Mustafa al-Harash, writing for the Institute of Palestine Studies (IPS), claims that on the evening of December 15, 2012 news from a source in the Syrian armed opposition reached the PLO that rebel groups had decided to storm the camp and had designated a zero hour for doing so, which was just hours away. After holding an emergency meeting, the PLO factions decided to send a delegation to meet with the leadership of the rebel groups and to discourage them from storming the camp. The rebel groups had already made a decision and would not retreat from it, however, indicating that they were not concerned with the consequences of assaulting the camp, in terms of death and destruction and displacement of civilians, considering this simply the “price of jihad” (dharibat al-jihad) that civilians must pay. The rebel leadership insisted that assaulting Yarmouk was justified because the camp is on “