No return to Yarmouk for Syrian-Palestinians fleeing Lebanon 

MARSEILLE — In al-Badawi, the Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon where Fadi Hani Bahij has lived with his wife and three children since fleeing Syria 12 years ago, the 47-year-old watches history repeat itself.

“We’ve been reminded of the displacement of our grandparents, from Palestine to Lebanon to Syria,” Bahij told Syria Direct. His family is originally from Shefa-Amr, a city east of Haifa, and fled during the Nakba—the Arabic term for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine and founding of the modern state of Israel. 

When war broke out in Syria more than a decade ago, Bahij and his family sought refuge in neighboring Lebanon. They were among the 31,000 Syrians of Palestinian origin to do so, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Since Israel launched an offensive in Lebanon at the end of September, hundreds of thousands of people—Syrians and Lebanese alike—have fled in the other direction, crossing the border to Syria. The newly displaced include thousands of Syrian-Palestinians, for whom the exodus marks at least the third wave of displacement in their family histories. 

Some Syrians returned to communities they fled during the 13-year conflict in their country, most of which are now controlled by the regime. Thousands of others have made their way to opposition-held territories in northwestern Syria, as well as the predominantly Kurdish northeast. 

But one place few are returning to is Bahij’s hometown, Syria’s “Little Palestine”: the Yarmouk camp in Damascus—where 80 percent of Syrian-Palestinian refugees in Lebanon originate from, according to Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS). Once considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora, today Yarmouk is a sparsely populated ruin, inaccessible to most.

Before Syria’s 2011 revolution, Yarmouk was home to the largest community of Palestinian refugees in Syria, with at least 160,000 Palestinians among a total 1.2 million residents in the camp and surrounding area, according to UN figures. AGPS puts the pre-war population higher, at up to 220,000, as many residents were not registered with UNRWA. 

Founded in 1957 to host Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948, Yarmouk was also a thriving center of Palestinian resistance, home to multiple Palestinian factions such as Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and later Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Political activity was tolerated and even encouraged—insofar as it remained restricted to the Palestinian cause. Yarmouk enjoyed good living conditions—much better than other Palestinian camps in Syria—and boasted one of the highest literacy rates in the country.

In 2012, opposition forces, which included both Syrians and Palestinians, took control of Yarmouk. In response, Syrian regime forces—alongside pro-regime Palestinian groups—imposed a suffocating siege, starving scores of residents to death. In 2015, the Islamic State (IS) and opposition factions began vying for control of Yarmouk, which was ultimately recaptured by regime forces in 2018, following massive aerial and ground bombardment that destroyed up to 80 percent of its buildings.

Today, approximately 50,000 people live in Yarmouk, according to AGPS. Of roughly 3,300 Syrian-Palestinians known to have returned to Syria since September, few if any have settled in Yarmouk because “their homes are destroyed or at risk of collapsing, and because entry to the camp requires security approvals,” Faiz Abu Eid, the director of AGPS, told Syria Direct.

Instead, Syrian-Palestinian returnees have settled in nearby areas of Damascus and Reef Dimashq, or other refugee camps across the country, such as the Daraa, Khan al-Sheikh, Khan Danoun, and Jaramana camps, he added.

Barriers to return

In late September, following nearly a year of cross-border fire between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, Tel Aviv significantly escalated its airstrikes throughout the country and launched a ground campaign. 

The offensive has since displaced nearly one million people inside Lebanon and driven more than 500,000 people across the border to Syria. More than 3,000 people have been killed and 14,000 injured, according to the UN. 

“The situation is terrible amid the bombing. It is as if I wasn’t displaced [to Lebanon], as if I were still there [in Syria],” Bahij said. While al-Badawi camp has largely been spared, Israel killed a Hamas member and his family in a drone strike there last month.

Despite the dangers of staying in Lebanon, returning to Syria is out of the question for many, including Syrian-Palestinians. Odai Mahmoud Saleh, 24, who is also originally from Yarmouk, cannot return because he is wanted for conscription, as is his brother. He and his family came to Lebanon in 2018 and eventually settled in al-Badawi camp.

Moreover, Saleh feels little connection to Syria, which he left when he was 11 years old. “I came of age in Lebanon. I speak with their accent,” he said. If anything, he thinks about going to Europe for a “future,” like many of his friends have. “It would be better than the living conditions here and in Syria,” he added. Saleh currently works in construction, earning $10 a day. 

For Bahij, even though he wants to go back to Syria, there is little to return to in Yarmouk. “My home is destroyed and I can’t afford to return and build a new life,” he lamented.

Reconstruction has been “slow” in Yarmouk, leaving its residents “suffering from poor basic services, which contributes greatly to preventing the return of more people to the camp,” Abu Eid said. Water, sewage, and electricity networks, as well as healthcare and educational facilities, are all heavily damaged.

Sara Dimashqi, 35, is among the several thousand current residents of Yarmouk camp. Displaced in 2012, last year she returned to the camp’s al-Jaouniyeh neighborhood with her husband and children. While most of the rubble has been removed, the overwhelming majority of Yarmouk’s buildings need repairs, with some on the brink of collapse, she said. 

Dimashqi described the state of services as “basic,” with sewage evacuated through an open drainage system and only one electricity transformer in the entire camp, services which are financed by private donations.

“Families cannot return easily to the camp, whether from Lebanon or from other areas, because most of their houses need to be rehabilitated,” Dimashqi said. This creates an economic barrier to return that many displaced people cannot afford. She does not know of anyone in her neighborhood or nearby neighborhoods who have returned from Lebanon.

“I have relatives who would like to return from Lebanon, but their homes need repair and some of their neighborhoods are still closed because they are not allowed to return to them, or there is rubble,” she added. The state only allows residents to live in a handful of neighborhoods.

Beyond widespread damage, poor services and the threat of conscription, security concerns are a major obstacle preventing displaced from returning to Yarmouk, Ayman Abu Hashem, a Palestinian-Syrian researcher specializing in refugee issues, said.

“The regime considers many who left to be, if not under the category of the opposition, their loyalty is in doubt. They have a severe fear of persecution if they return,” he explained. 

Preventing return

Abu Hashem considers the destruction of Yarmouk through years of siege and indiscriminate bombardment, to be “part of the regime’s political agenda to erase the camp, change its identity and ban returns” to the former opposition area. 

The fact that returnees are required to obtain security approval from the intelligence branches, he argues, is further testament to the regime’s desire to prevent returns. 

Syria Direct has also documented the systematic looting of Yarmouk camp by regime-backed forces that rendered houses unlivable. 

Read more: ‘Locusts’: Organized looting, destruction of displaced Syrians’ homes by ‘demolition forces’ and regime-affiliated groups

The degree of autonomy Yarmouk once had, through a local committee serving as a de facto municipality administering services, was eroded with the body’s 2018 dissolution, Abu Hashem added. 

The camp now falls directly under the Damascus Provincial Council. One engineer who has worked for the provincial council for 37 years told Syria Direct that the issue of Yarmouk camp is highly “sensitive,” unlike anywhere else in the province. “Previously, the local committee occupied a three-story building, now it’s only composed of one or two rooms,” and all archives are lost, he said, requesting anonymity for security reasons.

In addition, a new master plan was released in 2020 to redesign the camp—which the AGPS has warned would constitute “a new Nakba.” The plan threatens to dramatically change the camp’s demographic and architectural landscape through mass expropriation and redevelopment under Law No. 10 (2018). 

“The regime does not want Palestinians to return,” Abu Hashem argued. While preventing returns has a clear political motive—as in the case of many former opposition-controlled areas—when it comes to Yarmouk, “there is also a message it wants to send to Israel,” he suggested. 

“The existence of Palestinian camps in countries neighboring the occupation [Israel] is living evidence of the crime of uprooting them from their homeland and [denying] their claim to the right of return,” he said. 

Damascus has sought to limit the activities of Palestinian factions on its soil and since the outbreak of Israel’s latest war in Gaza has abstained from actively joining the “axis of resistance” to fight Israel. 

Despite countless barriers, those like Dimashqi who have managed to return to Yarmouk “are trying to bring the camp back to life,” Abu Hashem concluded.