The Islamic State's violent takeover of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria is a mark of Cain on the foreheads of the international community and the Arab world specifically, MK Ahmed Tibi (Joint List) said Monday.
"What's happening in the Yarmouk camp is a crime against humanity," Tibi said. "Over a thousand Palestinians were killed."
The Yarmouk camp, on the outskirts of Damascus, was once home to over 100,000 residents, but now has only 18,000 according to the UN Relief and Works Agency. It was under siege by the Syrian government for over two years, and was a battleground before that, devastated by street fighting, air attacks and shelling.
Islamic State has taken over 90 percent of Yarmouk, according to a Syrian human rights group, though the Syrian army surrounds the area, which is a few kilometers from Syrian President Bashar Assad's palace.
Hundreds of Palestinians fled the camp in recent days, adding to the tens of thousands who left in the four years since the civil war began in Syria.
Tibi, who visited the camp once on a trip to Syria, said that it is "between a rock and a hard place after two years under siege by the [Syrian] government and now ISIS is in there committing horrific crimes."
"ISIS is a fascist movement that is now publishing photos of heads it chopped off, including a photo of the Imam of the mosque, a Hamas supporter, and claiming he is an apostate," Tibi said in reference to reports from the camp that ISIS terrorists killed senior Hamas operative Sheikh Abu Salah Taha.
Tibi said the international community, including the Arab world, should be ashamed of allowing the violence in Yarmouk to take place.
"I feel anger and great sadness about what is happening in what is left of the camp," he stated. "There is a moral double standard. If other people were the victims, not Palestinians it would be different."
The Joint List MK called Yarmouk "another case where the refugees who suffered in the Nakba of 1948 are now suffering again," using the Arabic term for "catastrophe," which Palestinians and many Israeli-Arabs use to refer to the 1948 Israeli War of Independence.
"The killing of Palestinians is terrible," Tibi added.
Yarkmouk's residents are registered Palestinian refugees of the War of Independence and their descendants, which are granted refugee status by UNRWA, in a policy differing from the UN's definition of refugees in other conflicts.