Palestinians flee to Lebanon after jet bombs Syria's largest refugee camp

PLO officials say Assad regime's attack marks 'historic moment' with former ally as 50,000 Palestinians expected from Yarmouk

Martin Chulov in Beirut
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 December 2012

"Thousands of Palestinians in Syria are fleeing Damascus after an attack on the country's largest refugee camp, according to survivors who have reached Lebanon.

Some of those who have made it to the relative safety of Beirut claim the attack marks a "historical moment" in the Syrian war that has shattered the regime's claim to be a patron of resistance against Israel.

The fallout from the attack on the Yarmouk refugee camp in south-west Damascus on Sunday night is now reaching beyond Syria's borders, with Lebanon and Jordan braced for a fresh refugee crisis.
About 1,000 Palestinians had reached Lebanon less than 48 hours after a Syrian jet bombed a mosque and a school inside Yarmouk camp, the first time the large, sprawling section of the capital had been targeted from the air and only the second time it had been struck since the civil war began. The air strike is believed to have killed about 25 people and wounded several dozen more.
The new arrivals say they fear that authority in the Syrian capital is starting to crumble. They are now openly hostile towards a regime that had long portrayed itself as the protector of the 500,000 Palestinians living in Syria, most of whom had called Yarmouk home until now.


"No Palestinian will trust them anymore after what they did on Sunday," said Abu Khalil, a father of three who has taken refuge in the infamous Beirut refugee camp Sabra-Shatila. "All of us accept that blood has been drawn between us and the regime. There is a debt to settle. It will never be like it was.".....

The Yarmouk attack is also being seen as a turning point by senior Palestinian officials in Lebanon. Qassem Hassan, the general secretary of the PLO in Sabra-Shatila, said: "We sense a very bad smell to this. Why this is happening, we can't understand. The PLO had taken a position not to support the regime or the other side.
"We did not interfere in the affairs of Syria and they shouldn't have interfered in ours. A volcano has erupted here. Is this part of a plan to reorganise the Middle East? We don't know. But it is a very big event.""