Appendix on Yarmuk

I felt I should have included this as well, it's a brief talk I had with another resident of Yarmuk...

After a while we were sitting talking in the restaurant, a veteran of the camp, Ghassan, joined us for a drink. He has a seasoned communist look...large red shirt falling out of some blue jeans, long gray hair tied back and remarkable beard. "Well, nowadays, if they stop me is because they think I am a Salafist 'cause of the beard, but then they realize I have blue jeans and they put me in jail anyway...as a communist!" He goes on poking fun at the rumors spread by the government about supposed armed 'vandals' (mukharribin) infiltrated in the camp, pointing out how there are only 35 kalashnikov in Yarmuk (a normal quantity for a Palestinian camp with different factions inside), but the Syrian authorities are fabricating the need of security to legitimize further intervention in the camp. For example, they are suggesting that mukharribin are entering Yarmuk from the neighboring area of Hajar al-Sawda.

With regards to the main political stakeholder in the camp, Hamas, the fact that it did not take a clear position on the unrest has extremely upset Damascus, according to Ghassan, but, at the same time, the Ba'th regime doesn't seem concerned even about losing bigger allies, as it is evident from the exacerbated relations with Turkey. The unique priority is to gain the upper hand in the repression.

This is also evident by the recent opening to the opposition, embodied in the 'National Dialogue' initiative, which has not implied a contemporary end to violent repression