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].

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