Insurgents attack Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus.

Christof Lehmann (nsnbc). The leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command in Yarmouk refugee camp, Anwar Raja, is daily appearing on Syrian Radio and TV with news and updates. According to Raja the Yarmukh refugee camp has suffered a renewed attack from insurgents. The attack has been repelled.

The first attack against Yarmouk took place in November, killing several of the leaders of the Palestinian popular committees that were formed to protect the camp by preventing insurgents from entering.

Anwar Raja stated that the Syrian Army came to rescue the Palestinians in Yarmouk by expelling the insurgents. Raja said that it was at this time that the media war started. Foreign media began disseminating the misinformation that the Syrian Army had attacked the  Yarmouk refugee camp. The reality of the situation is that the Syrian Military has prevented massacres against Palestinians.

While the anti-Syrian alliance after more than 20 months has failed to produce decisive military or political results, the media war is gaining ever higher priority. After the closure of Syrian media websites and the illegal blocking of Syrian radio and TV satellite signals; after the recent severing of a main internet cable that rendered the entire country off line for three days, the strategy seems now also to target specific organization´s websites.

Simultaneously with the attack on Yarmouk the website of the PFLP-GC, Palestinesons.com went off line and was replaced with a site that sales domain names.

Palestinian refugee camps throughout Syria have been attacked by the insurgents since representatives of the Palestinian factions and representatives of the camps declared that they would not join the foreign backed insurgents fight against the Syrian government and the Syrian Army.

Some of the attacks have been false flag attacks in an attempt to enrage Palestinians against the Syrian military. Other attacks were right out punitive attacks as a response to the Palestinians unwillingness to fight against the government of the sole Arab nation that consequently and consistently has supported the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian resistance.

Raja stated that the trick to provoke a response from the Syrian Army to protect refugees for then to use media to make it look as if the army had attacked refugees was by no means a new invention.

It has previously been played, using the Iraqi card in an attempt to stir up a conflict between Iraqi refugees and the Syrian Army. The attempt has failed. It has also been used in an attempt to stir up a conflict between the Kurdish population of Syria and the Syrian Military and it failed. They keep trying to play the Palestinian card and they will fail.

Raja continued, stating that the people are aware of that the Syrian government has no reason to attack the Palestinians. The Syrian government has always treated the Palestinians as citizens rather than as refugees.

“For your information”, Raja continued, “when my family came to Damascus for the first time, 50 years ago, my family rent an apartment in Yarmouk and the owner of the apartment was a Palestinian”.

Raja asked why Palestinians suddenly , after 20 months, would want to start a revolt ? If there had existed a real conflict between the inhabitants of Yarmouk and the Syrian government then there would have been a resistance since the onset of the chaos in Syria.

Raja added “what kind of revolution is this supposed to be, that travels like a circus group.

The renewed attack against the Yarmouk refugee camp is likely to be part of the insurgents attempt to focus many of the otherwise isolated Salafist and Wahabist groups which are brought to Syria from all over the world with the aid of Saudi Arabia and Qatar on Damascus while carrying out high profile bombings and kidnappings in other regions.

It is however, likely that also the most recent attempt of the so-called “Friends of Syria” to create a united, politically and militarily credible opposition will fail.

The mere fact that the US-State Department had to single out the Al-Nusra as terrorists, in an attempt to cover over the fact that the USA is sponsoring Al Qaeda associated terrorist groups and recognizes them as sole representative of the Syrian people, while other “Friends of Syria” praise the virtue of Jihad and that of some of the most radical Islamist terrorists that have been deployed to Syria indicates, that the Friends of Syria are as split as the splinter groups who each declare their little enclave of villages or quarters as Caliphat.

Christof Lehmann

nsnbc – 17.12.2012