“The Twitter account of the Ibn Taymiyyah Center, affiliated with the global jihad in the Gaza Strip (The Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem), announces the death in Syria of Wissam Muhammad al-Atal from the Gaza Strip (apparently during a suicide bombing attack). The black flag in the background bears the logo of the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (November 2, 2013)…
“Only a limited number (relative to other countries) of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians from Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria have gone to fight in Syria so far. In our assessment that is primarily because of the security and logistic difficulties involved. However, the fact that they join the ranks of the rebels raises potential threats for Israel. Most of them will probably join organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the global jihad where they will acquire military skills and have their jihadist worldview reinforced. In Syria they can be expected to form ties with Al-Qaeda and global jihad operatives who may try to handle them for terrorist missions when they return from the fighting,” reported the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.
“Jonathan S. Landay’s report about the Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, shows how deeply rooted is this hate propaganda in Palestinians’ minds. ” An estimated 16,000 Palestinian and Syrian civilians have been trapped for months inside Yarmouk, with virtually no food, water, medicines or electricity…”
According to Landay, “Those who’ve been helping Assad’s troops to encircle Yarmouk belong to a shabiha unit recruited from local members of secular Palestinian groups. They’re dominated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which long has been close to the Assad government and based in Damascus. It was designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 1997 for a series of spectacular attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers in the 1970s and 80s…”
“On the other side are militants from Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip and also was listed by the United States as a terrorist group in 1997. They hold most of Yarmouk with Syrian and foreign extremists that includes the Nusra Front, an al Qaida affiliate, according to the aid expert, PFLP-GC officials and displaced residents… ”
“Civilians began fleeing when Islamist rebels and foreign fighters first entered Yarmouk on June 5, 2012, according to Abu Kifah, a local PFLP-GC official. Reinforcements arrived and clashes erupted on Dec. 16, 2012, between the Islamists and the secular Palestinians aligned with the Assad regime”…
Hamed, a fled Yarmouk in 2012 told the reporter, “The rebels… have imposed strict Islamic rule inside Yarmouk, forcing women to dress in long garments and requiring men to pray five times daily. “We couldn’t take life there anymore. The armed people would go into people’s homes, break the walls and steal everything,” said Hamed, who referred to the Islamists as “the germs.” …
Foreign and Palestinian Jihadis maintain “a brutal siege of Damascus’ Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp where civilians, including babies and the elderly, have starved to death, and others reportedly have been driven to eating cats”….
Sunni Jihadis, including Palestinians, are flocking to Syria either to fight with Assad or against him, or against the Shiite and other Islamist fighters. This however, doesn’t stop the Palestinians from “fervently believe that the siege is part of a secret plot by the United States, European powers and Israel to raze Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian settlement in Syria, and disperse its residents even further from their homeland.”