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| Associated Press/Mohammed Zaatari - In this Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013 photo, Palestinian children who fled their houses in the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in south Damascus, sitting inside a children |
By | Associated Press
"...There will be no more martyrs
for Palestine in my family," Umm Sami said, who only gave her nickname
for fear of reprisals. "This war is a Syrian problem."
Now safe in Lebanon, the 45-year-old widow and her family have joined thousands of other Palestinian refugees who have found shelter in the country since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad
erupted nearly two years ago. The conflict has left more than 2 million
people internally displaced, and pushed 650,000 more to seek refuge
abroad.
Umm Sami's resolve to keep her
sons out of the fight in Syria ties into a deep-rooted sentiment among a
generation of Palestinian refugees who say they are fed up with being
dragged into the region's conflicts on a promise of getting their own
state.
The Palestinian exodus from Syria
has also revived a decades-old debate over the refugees' right of
return to their homes that are now in Israel. That has added another
layer of complexity to a conflict already loaded with sectarian and
ethnic overtones that have spilled over into neighboring countries,
raising fears of a regional war.
Palestinians
living in Arab countries — including the half-million refugees in Syria
— are descendants of the hundreds of thousands who fled or were driven
from their homes in the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948.
Having scattered across the Middle East since then, Palestinians
consistently have found themselves in the middle of the region's
conflicts.
After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein, hundreds of Palestinians were killed as
the Sunni and Shiite militias fought for dominance of the country.
Iraq's Shiite majority saw Saddam, who like most Palestinians was a
Sunni Muslim, as a patron of the stateless Palestinians, granting them
rights the dictator denied his own citizens because they were of the
rival sect.
About 1,000 Palestinians fled the 2004-07 sectarian bloodshed in Baghdad, living in a refugee camp near the Syrian border before being resettled in third countries.
During Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil
war, Palestinians played a major role, fighting alongside Muslim
militiamen against Christian forces.
Umm Sami, who was born in a
refugee camp in Lebanon before the war, was twice forced to flee the
fighting, most notably in 1982 when her family escaped the Sabra and
Chatilla camps during the notorious massacre of Palestinians there by
Christian militias.
She would eventually bury her
father, two brothers and her husband — all fallen fighters... READ MORE
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