The question of the Palestinian refugees living in camps across Syria has been an unavoidable one since the beginning of the Syrian uprising in March 2011. The Palestinian refugees in Syria, and the Palestinian cause in general, came to the fore as they were constantly used by the regime of Bashar Al-Assad in order to discredit the uprising altogether and bestow upon itself the sort of credibility that none of the Arab regimes toppled before could have had. Assad, we were told, was an undefeated patron of the Palestinians, and his regime has been an unquestionable ally of the Palestinians and their cause all along.

Although some Palestinian groups, both within and outside Syria, had initially insisted this was an “internal Syrian issue,” the relevance of the Palestinian cause to the events in Syria made it difficult to remain silent. Palestinian groups began taking a position on the Syrian crisis. Some sided with the regime, while others, notably Hamas, backed the uprising and denounced its former ally in the Syrian regime.

One remaining Palestinian ally of Assad is the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command (PFLP-GC).  In fact, its notorious pro-Assad loyalist leader Ahmed Jibril has sent his group to fight alongside the Syrian regime on several occasions during the uprising. PFLP-GC has long been close to the Syrian regime, having splintered from the mainstream PFLP of George Habash in the late 1960s.

Following the recent attacks by government forces on the Yarmouk refugee camp, the largest Palestinian camp and home to nearly 500,000 refugees, many placed the blame on the PFLP-GC inside Yarmouk for involving the Palestinians in Syria’s internal conflict.