Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday called on the UN to
intervene to allow thousands of Palestinians from Syria to enter the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip.
Abbas’s appeal came after thousands of Palestinians
from the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus fled in recent days to Lebanon
because of the fighting between the Syrian army and rebel forces.
Earlier
this week, dozens of Palestinians were killed when Syrian jets fired rockets at
the camp.
The Syrian authorities said they attacked the camp after
hundreds of “terrorists” entered it in the past few days.
Abbas said that
the Palestinians do not intervene in the internal affairs of Syria or any other
Arab country.
However, a radical PLO member group, the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, has been fighting alongside the
Syrian army against the rebels, according to Palestinian sources.
The
sources said that more than 700 Palestinians have been killed since the
beginning of the crisis in Syria, home to nearly 500,000
Palestinians.
Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf said that his faction was
prepared to receive the Palestinian refugees if Israel allows them to enter the
West Bank.
“This is a sacred right and an urgent humanitarian case,”
Assaf said. He was speaking during a sit-in strike in Ramallah in solidarity
with the Palestinians of Syria.
He said that 90 percent of the camp’s
residents have fled their homes in the past few days because of the
fighting.
PLO leaders in the West Bank have accused the Syrian
authorities of perpetrating massacres against the Palestinians.
The
leaders accused the PFLP-GC, which is headed by Ahmed Jibril, of “selling itself
to the devil” by directing its weapons against fellow
Palestinians.
Jibril denied that he and his family had fled to Lebanon or
Iran.
He told reporters that some 400 militiamen belonging to the Syrian
opposition were now in control of the Yarmouk camp. He said that he instructed
his followers to withdraw from the camp to avoid further
bloodshed.
Jibril reiterated his support for the Syrian government,
which, he added, is facing a “conspiracy to topple the regime.”
On
Wednesday, another 60 Palestinian families from the Yarmouk camp crossed the
border into Lebanon to escape the fighting.
More than 2,000 Palestinians
have fled from Syria to Lebanon since the beginning of the week.