Below is Local Coordination Committee’s statement on the murder of senior Hamas official Kamal Ghnaja and what has been happening recently in several Palestinian camps in Syria. The statement came after several Palestinians have reported on Facebook that regime is trying to cause problems between Syrian and Palestinian communities in Palestinian camps. Palestinians in Syria in support of the revolution have created several pages on Facebook to report daily on the situation in the camps, and on Palestinians’ role in the Syrian revolution. Palestinian activists say that more than 150 Palestinians martyred in Syria, around 700 injured, and more than 35,000 detained. The statement goes as follows:

Since the beginning of the Revolution, the regime tried to fray the social fabric of Syrian society in an attempt to derail the Revolution’s goals of and demand for freedom, dignity, and justice in a civil state.

Due to outstanding public awareness and behavior, the regime’s attempts to drag the country into civil war have thus far failed, despite its oppression, violence, and repression.

The regime is clearly counting on creating conflict and sectarian violence and igniting strife between Syrians and Palestinians by recruiting drug dealers, drug users, and other criminals into the shabiha. These shabiha enter Palestinian refugee camps under the guise of “safeguarding the camps,” yet commit murder and engage in kidnapping. The most recent evidence of this is the assassination of Mr. Kamal Ghanjeh (Abu Anas Nizar), a Hamas leader who was tortured to death by the regime’s shabiha. The shabiha then set his house on fire to destroy the evidence of their heinous crime.

The Local Coordination Committees in Syria (LCC) offers its deepest condolences to our Palestinian brothers and sisters, who have demonstrated the unity between our two peoples since the beginning of our Revolution. We condemn the regime’s criminal acts against Palestinians in Syria, and affirm that the regime’s cowardly attempts to destroy our brotherly relations and common objectives between the two peoples will not succeed. We reaffirm that only as free people can we be capable of regaining control of our rights and our occupied territories. The battle against tyranny is the same in Palestine and Syria [only Palestine is under occupation].

The reality is, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the regime’s rejectionist policies (toward Israel) and claims of steadfastness for the past 40 years have only been attempts to enslave the people. The Palestinian experiences in the past demonstrate that the Syrian regime views the Palestinian people as mere cards with which to gamble, regionally and internationally. A regime that kills its own people will not shy away from spilling Palestinian blood for the sake of its own survival. The regime’s lies about its resistance to Israel were exposed as it took advantage of Palestinian heroes, whose yearning for their own homeland translated into facing Israeli bullets with bare chests, while the artificial resistance along the Golan Heights border has remained silent during the regime’s long tenure.

Thus, the LCC renews its call upon the Syrian and Palestinian public to avoid being pulled into the regime’s web of lies. We salute the Palestinians’ stand with the Syrian Revolution for dignity, which has thus far resulted in hundreds of Palestinians martyred and detained in multiple Palestinian camps. We also deeply appreciate Palestinian relief efforts, which have included sheltering our own refugees and providing financial support, both inside Syria and abroad.

The Local Coordination Committees in Syria

June 28, 2012