Three of the Arab Levant peoples, Syrian,
Palestinian and Lebanese, are companions in misery, having together endured the
exactions of the Syrian regime. The plight of the Palestinians stands out,
however, and holds specific implications, since all three peoples were held
hostage by this regime under the pretext of the “struggle for Palestine”.
Thus, the state of emergency, the ban on political
parties, the subjugation of state and society, the safeguard of the so-called
"soft waist", and the "confrontation of surrender plots” all
stemmed from the "primacy of the Palestinian cause". Lebanon's
Palestinian refugee camps’ wars can be tied to it, as were arrests and
oppression in Syrian camps.
One needs only note that Damascus most
horrendous torture departments is known as "The Palestine
Branch" for him/her to grasp how Assad regime established its
relation with the cause of Palestine, which finds its expressions in a dark
brick prison on the one hand, and a bleak virtual one on the other.
Dissident Syrians and Palestinians are packed inside the first, where they are
tortured and degraded for having betrayed the "core" cause of the
regime. Opponents are confined to the second, by means of a mind-numbing
jargon of resistance, which brands them as "enemies of Palestine" and
of the Baath party, Palestine's self-anointed standard bearer.
It was over the Palestine theme that the regime
laid a vast framework of intimidation, suppression of freedoms, and
consolidation of despotism. Those who dared challenge it would be charged
with "entertaining a plot" in made-to-order indictments churned by
various security services, and locked up in the "Palestine Branch”.
Likewise, the regime concocted a "comprehensive
agenda" which served as charter for a motley bunch of
"recalcitrants" and is recited ad nauseam, invoking Palestine yet
again to mask their misdeeds. In it, they portray the whole world (with
more than a touch of hypocrisy or idiocy) as a den of schemes and conspiracies,
directed against them and their patron regime, on account of their “loyalty” to
Palestine.
This cruel hoax was perpetrated over four
decades, and then brandished as a sword by the regime and its allies against
the Syrian revolution for freedom and justice that started last year, in the
belief it would deter it. They were stunned for once to realize it was too
late, and that repression and hubris were no longer effective. For no
longer did the “Palestine branch” intimidate, and the Lattaqieh, Deraa and Homs
Palestinian refugee camps, along with the ones in Damascus and other urban
centers, found common cause with their Syrian neighbors, and broke in a matter
of weeks with years of subjugation and humiliation.
The revolt has now fractured the very walls of
"Palestine Branch", and Syrians (along with Palestinians) are
snuffing out between its cells. Once it soon comes to collapse, the tens
of thousands who left bits of their lives in it will build a memorial atop its
ruins, dedicated to those who were robbed of their years and hopes inside it,
whose mothers sighed in anguish on the sidewalks around it, and stood in the
long waiting queues...
Ziad Majed
Thanks to my friend Omar who translated the original textfrom Arabic
