Once a vibrant hub of Palestinian life, Yarmouk now lies in ruins — its homes shelled, its streets silent.

After siege, starvation and betrayal, the fight here is no longer for a Palestinian state — but simply for a place to live.

YARMOUK, Syria — On a ferociously hot summer morning, the inspectors stepped gingerly through an alley and cast a critical eye at the war-withered buildings in this sprawling Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus.

The alley was typical of what Yarmouk had become after 14 years of Syria’s grinding civil war, which had cut the camp’s population from 1.2 million people — 160,000 of them Palestinian refugees — to fewer than several hundred and turned what had been the de facto capital of the Palestinian diaspora and resistance movements into a wastela

See Full Page