Ben White: Syria has five neighbours: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Israel (with the latter occupying the Golan Heights since 1967). According to recent figures, Turkey currently hosts 1.8 million Syrian refugees, Lebanon a further 1.17 million, Jordan around 630,000, and Iraq some 250,000.
Israel, however, with a GDP per capita almost double that of Turkey and five times as much as Jordan, has not accepted a single one.
This is unlikely to change any time soon. On 6 September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the idea of accepting any Syrian refugees, stating: “Israel is a very small state. It has no geographic depth or demographic depth.”
The day before, former finance minister and Yesh Atid chair Yair Lapid expressed similar sentiments, arguing that Israel “cannot afford to get into the matter of the refugee crisis” since to do so, he added instructively, could “open a back door to discussing the right of return for Palestinians”.
Senior Palestinian officials, meanwhile, are urging Israel to permit Palestinian refugees from Syria to come to the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
An estimated 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria since the start of the uprising. Around 80,000 of the 560,000 UNRWA-registered Palestinian refugees in Syria are no longer in the country. Yarmouk camp, once home to some 200,000, now has 5-8,000 civilians remaining. In the devastated camp, many still rely on food parcels, and over-stretched doctors are treating cases of typhoid. More here.