Aleppo November 2012 photo by Narciso Contreras of AP
The war in Syria has earned infamy through its savage destruction of a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional nation, its toxic nurturing of regional insecurity and its futility as a means of bringing viable political change to Syria. Syria ’s progressive mutilation is wrenching to observe.
Alongside millions of Syrians, some 530,000 Palestine refugees are among the civilians experiencing the worst of the endless carnage. Syrian authorities express continuing hospitality to Palestine refugees. The reality, however, is that the war is fast eroding the idyll of secure, sympathetic refuge Palestinians have enjoyed in Syria since 1948. That idyll splinters with every Palestinian who dies, suffers injury, is displaced or kidnapped for ransom, and as Palestine refugee camps, one after the other, are transformed into theatres of war.
The displacement and impoverishment that Palestinians are enduring in Syria are wretched enough. More insidious yet equally debilitating is the war’s cruel awakening of dreaded memories, of profound existential fears embedded in the Palestinian psyche – memories of the original uprooting 65 years ago. For Palestinians, most sadly for the younger generation, Syria is a harrowing reminder, a gruesome exhibition of the vulnerability inherent in their perennially stateless condition.
UNRWA [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees] remains unwavering in its efforts to help reinforce the resilience of Palestine refugees in Syria. With the support of donors and our counterparts, our 3,700 courageous staff are stretching every sinew to double the numbers we reach with cash and food relief. We are strengthening our medical, psychosocial and other supportive services, finding ways in spite of the conflict to sustain the education of refugee children, while also advocating on behalf of Palestine refugees. We will continue to condemn the conduct of armed conflict in civilian areas and to call on all sides to protect civilians, to observe their international humanitarian law obligations and to respect the sanctity of human life.
We believe in the intrinsic value of humanitarian action and will continue striving to alleviate Palestinian suffering in Syria and across the region. Yet the obsession with military solutions, coupled with unbridled disdain for international law, threaten to overwhelm our humanitarian exertions. Only a negotiated end to the conflict can avoid the abyss into which Syria, the region – and even nations further afield – are being dragged.
The proposed gathering in Geneva could not be more welcome. All sides, their sponsors and influential states must recognize that to encourage or support Syria’s civil war or to arm any side as a means towards political change is like selecting a chainsaw as an instrument for brain surgery. The gathering in Geneva will do well to bear in mind the observation of Jean Paul Sartre: “When the rich wage war, it is the poor who suffer”.
Michael Kingsley-Nyinah is the UNRWA director in Syria.
Unfortunately the US does not abide by International Law, otherwise they would not be arming Al Nusra front/Al Qaeda in trying to bring down and effect regime change in an internationally recognized and legal member of the UN, this war is aimed at Iran, first topple Assad, cut off and isolate Hezbollah in Lebanon, all the easier for Israel to destroy it from the south, then as Saudi Arabia said not long ago “cut off the head of the snake” [Iran], and hey presto US dominance in the middle east. Hezbollah quite rightly recognize this is an existential threat, hence its fight alongside Assad, fortunately Assad seems to have the support of approx 75% of Syrians of all sects including moderate Sunnis who abhor the throat cutting jihadists, the US could not care less for the Syrians, when domination of the middle east is at stake, hopefully they will not prevail.
War is a curse. It wasn’t right to send the patients of Apeldoorn Mental hospital to Auschwitz. It wasn’t right to “solve” Europe’s Jewish problem by shafting the Palestinians.
The refugees have suffered enough .
Problem is the maintream media in the USA will not inform Dick & Jane of the half million Palestinians in Syria who ran there in fear from the Jewish Zionists with good reasons, such as Deir Yassein. Syria now reminds me of the Spanish Civil War Hemingway made famous back in the day. Proxy fighting for control of the world’s opinion, not to mention the world. Guernica2 anyone?
So what if you’re a Syrian man, woman or child? Will the tainted UN body look at the house of S or the democratic rulers of Q for answers?
Since when did any American administration care about the Palestinians or the other Levant Arabs? Show me an example! Anyone who thinks that Obama or McCaine and his girlfriend side-kick Lindsay Graham care about the Syrians, Lebanese or the Palestinians, certainly needs a cold bucket of ice dumped over their heads pronto.
It’s disconcerting to find Empire and democracy living harmoniously, side by side in the 21st century. Everything that is going on over there in the Levant is about israel. Not poor little israel, but Empire Israel. For those readers who are unfamiliar with the term ‘The Yinon Plan”, please research.
Here’s what Michel Chossudovsky (Global Research, March 3, 2013) has to say about it:
“[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.
Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for #$%$ Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.
The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.
Greater Israel requires the breaking up of the existing Arab states into small states.
The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation… This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme.
Viewed in this context, the war on Syria is part of the process of Israeli territorial expansion. Israeli intelligence working hand in glove with the US, Turkey and NATO is directly supportive of the Al Qaeda terrorist mercenaries inside Syria.
The Zionist Project also requires the destabilization of Egypt, the creation of factional divisions within Egypt as instrumented by the Arab Spring” leading to the formation of a sectarian based State dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.”
People of the Levant recognize this dastardly plan against their present and future progeny, are plenty discussing it in cafes and around water-coolers: some are working full-throttle against it, hence hizbollah’s total commitment to militarily assisting Assad of Syria, one of the last Arab leader ‘Resistors’ of the Yonin Plan.
The long nightmare that Palestinians have been forced to endure, is part and parcel of the Yonin plan. The zionists’ imperial ambitions are supported and protected by western imperial powers and together they aim to empty all of israel of Arab natives, turn the holy lands into an unspiritual war fortress forever more, while burying the old cries of Palestinians amongst the newer cries of other Arab Levantians fighting amongst themselves their sectarian wars, instigated by the collaboration of the Takfiris, the zionists and the west.
The people of the Levant have identified three enemies that must be neutralized: the zionists, the Takfiris, and their arms supplier suggar-daddy, the West. And if this axis of evil thinks it can win out in the end, they’re in for a shock. Say goodbye to tel aviv, say hello to the new exodus of the euro convert jews – regardless of the hits that the Levantians may take. This is a guarantee.
Maybe after tel aviv is gone and with it its loathsome murderous influence on the region and the world, maybe then we can have a global discussion about ridding ourselves, as a humanity, of the criminal shadow of imperialism, annihilate it in the 21st century like we annihilated nazism in the 20th century.