Some of the privations that many people experience in the modern world, things such as a lack of electricity and gas for heating or cooking, can be overcome or if not overcome at least endured. However, other forms of privation cannot be endured, such as a lack of water, food and decent sanitary conditions, and it is precisely these that the Palestinians in the Yarmouk refugee camp are currently experiencing. Dehydration, disease and penury are daily realities for a people the world has forgotten or seems not to care about. To see a child die of starvation, any child, let alone one of your own, is a form of sorrow that no one should ever have to bear, yet this is now an everyday occurrence in the Yarmouk refugee camp. People in the Yarmouk camp in Syria are being forced to consume grass, leaves, animal feed and anything they can lay their hands on in order to slake their thirst or assuage their hunger, irrespective of the fitness of these things for human consumption. It is difficult to find words to adequately describe the misery of the Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk camp after more than 180 days of siege by the pitiless forces of the Syrian regime led by president Bashar Al-Assad. It is difficult to understand why the world has turned its back on these people who are being forced to live in such dismal conditions. Despite the conflict in Syria, which is not the cause of the neglect the camp has been suffering from, there have been many opportunities for the international community to administer humanitarian aid to Yarmouk, yet none has been forthcoming. Why is the world, even the Arab world, treating the residents of Yarmouk with such indifference? The situation of the Palestinians in Syria should be heartbreaking for every human being who has knowledge of it. If the terrifying hazards of a war zone were not enough for the Palestinian refugees, the added visitation of hunger and disease in the camp is a shameful slap in the face of the so-called civilised world. Yarmouk, along with other areas, is now paying the heaviest price for Syria's war. There have been a number of reports of Palestinian refugees dying in the Yarmouk camp from starvation. These have included children as young as a few months old. The television pictures coming out of Yarmouk of starving women and children are nothing short of excruciating to all right-minded people. Yet, the world, and especially the Arab world, seems to be unconcerned at the plight of these innocent Palestinians caught up in a conflict that has not been of their making. The latest reports from activists on the ground have detailed the deaths of at least 40 people from starvation already this year, and the count is increasing day by day. Located in the south of Damascus, the Yarmouk refugee camp initially housed 250,000 Palestinian refugees, out of which 150,000 were registered with the Syrian government. However, after three years of a bloody and brutal civil war, Yarmouk has been reduced to ruins and only about 18,000 refugees remain. The others, it is thought, have managed to escape, mainly to Jordan or Lebanon. A BBC report has claimed that the Yarmouk camp's gates have been closed to all traffic, including aid, since July last year, and no help has arrived to help its beleaguered people since then. Besides the 1,500 Palestinians that have been confirmed killed in the ongoing conflict, many others have been wounded, and, as if that were not enough, the already perilous situation is set to worsen. One can only wonder when there will be an end to the suffering of these unfortunate people. As if it were not enough to have been made a refugee once, to then have to seek refuge from a refuge is piling misfortune upon misfortune. A larger number of refugees have fled from Syria to nearby areas, along with the vast majority of them being displaced inside Syria itself. The migration is a damning indictment of the region's prevailing troubles; however, equally culpable in this ongoing disaster has been the indifference of the other Arab countries. The Yarmouk refugee camp is at the heart of the Palestinian tragedy. Even though it is located in Syria, it is a salient and articulate commentary on the Palestinian situation. One of the reasons for this is the fact that this Palestinian camp has been used by the Syrian rebels as a point of contact with the outside world for the past six months. This is partly due to the fact that the refugee camp has been seen as almost autonomous from Syrian rule, therefore presenting the rebels with a base beyond the government's control. However, beyond the current conflict the Syrian government has been one of the few in the region to provide any sort of a refuge for the Palestinians. But even in Syria thousands of refugees have become the victims of the political machinations and sectarian conflicts that tend to flare up in the region. The current conflict is easily the worst ever faced by the camp. In December 2012, it was taken over by the opposition Free Syrian Army, and, following fierce fighting, the camp was bombarded from the air by government forces, killing dozens of people while thousands more were forced to flee for their lives. Although the signs of danger for the Palestinians were very obvious, it was some time before the leadership decided to negotiate with a view to gaining special status for the camp and keeping it out of the Syrian conflict. There has since been agreement that the refugees should not be used as fodder in the war in Syria, but all attempts to implement this agreement have thus far failed. The failure in this regard has not been limited to the Palestinian leadership or the Syrian government alone. Instead, the international community has also failed to recognise the gravity of the situation and the whole episode is proving to be a shameful failure. The international community quite rightly militates loudly against Al-Assad's use of chemical weapons, but the daily dying of the refugees is also a humanitarian crisis that cries out for action. It is a shameful indictment of the compassion of the international community that this deepening crisis in the Syrian conflict has received so little attention. There has not even been a resolution by the UN concerning Yarmouk, leading many to question the value given to Palestinian lives by the international community. Meanwhile, the Palestinian government has been arranging more peace talks, though it is difficult to hold out any hope for their success. The Palestinian refugee camps in Syria are starving to death, and their problems are hardly seen as a priority. Presently, the Palestinian refugees have no political representation, no legal status, no international support and no true leadership dedicated to solving their most pressing issues. The Palestinian refugees were initially dispossessed by Israel in 1948, and they have since been suffering at the hands of the Arab countries. The latter have also proved to be inhospitable and unwelcoming to the refugees from Palestine. There have been instances that have suggested that Arab militias may have in the past perpetrated massacres against the Palestinian people. Even though many Arab peoples have expressed solidarity with the Palestinians, their acts have suggested otherwise. Nothing has been done politically or practically as the population of Yarmouk has shrunk from 250,000 to 18,000 souls, all of them cowering, famished and shivering with pain, starvation and cold. Not only does the Arab world seem to be indifferent to the situation, one Lebanese journalist has been callous enough to put into words what certain leaders may believe but have thus far shrunk from saying: “the situation is the responsibility of Palestinians themselves.” Irrespective of the brutal non-response of the world as a whole, the seeds of the scenario can be found in the Balfour Declaration made to the Zionists by the British government nearly a century ago, and the responsibility should be shared not only by the Israelis and their illegal occupation, but also by the international community as a whole. The writer is a Palestinian-Canadian writer and activist originally from the Palestinian village of Balaa near Tulkarem.
