By January 25, 2013, 63 civilians had died as a result of starvation in Yarmouk, the biggest “unofficial” Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. It was the result of collective punishment imposed by the regime on the camp, as well as on other Damascene neighborhoods with heavy presence of the Free Syrian Army, such as Moaddamia.

With Yarmouk sealed off, and the regime blocking the entry of food and medicine into the camp, people have been forced to eat cactuses. "There was nothing else in the market when I went this morning, so I bought 6 cactuses for 75 Syrian pounds, and prepared them as if they were beans," Yarmouk resident Mohammad Abul Majed explained.  

“Our children will grow up, and will tell their beloved ones how their mothers fed them cactuses, because there was nothing else. Oh Lord, we ate cactuses!”, was one of the messages shared on a photo that went viral.

Amid the heavy pressure and humanitarian tragedy, people in the camp have managed to raise their voices to send powerful messages to the international community. “We are the martyrs of hunger”, “Save Yarmouk”, “Yarmouk resists”, and “This is our last refugee tent”, were some of the slogans raised during campaigns and demonstrations, recorded and shared with the world by media activists from groups such as Lens of Yarmouk.

Huge efforts have been made to try to bring food and medicines into the camp, amid increasing popular outcry towards the suffering in Yarmouk and other besieged areas. This tragedy also had its reflection in the work of Syrian and Syrian-Palestinian artists such as Yasser Abu Hamad, Khalil Abu Arfa and Hani Abbas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGnGXHcgVnw

Instead of providing the people with aid, the regime has dropped explosive barrels onto the starving people. On the spot where the last barrel fell, a group of Yarmouk families gathered under the slogan “One, one, one, the Syrian and the Palestinian people are one.” It was a clear message directed not only to the regime, but to those trying to detach the Yarmouk population from the Syrian context, under false pretenses of neutrality.

Even under such extreme circumstances, Syrian Palestinians have shown the extent of their solidarity. On one of the rare occasions in which the regime allowed a few baskets of food to enter the camp, the families who received the food cooked for the whole camp, sharing it with everyone in need. A symbolic gesture that shows that, even under starvation, the regime´s “divide and conquer” campaign has failed. Both Syrians and Syrian Palestinians share a struggle against tyranny, as artist Hakam al-Waheb presents it in a powerful painting: “One was killed by gunfire in Aleppo, one was killed by starvation in Yarmouk.”