Why
Palestinian refugees can't be
ignored By Ramzy Baroud
When it was reported that Lebanese
security had killed 18-year-old Ahmad al-Qasim in
the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp on June 15 - over a
dispute concerning a motorbike rider without
proper identification - the camp's Palestinian
refugee population erupted in anger and dismay.
Within a few days, outrage and violence
spread, and more refugees were killed. One was
Fouad Muhi'edeen Lubany, who was killed on June
18, as a crowd of mourning refugees attempted to
bury the first victim of Nahr al-Bared, located
near Tripoli in the north. Another was Khaled
al-Youssef, who was shot in Ein al-Hilweh refugee
camp, near Saida, about 50 kilometers south of
Beirut. More Palestinians were reportedly injured,
along with three Lebanese security officers.
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon exist on
the margins of a larger
political question
concerning the country's irreconcilable sectarian,
factional and familial divides. This makes it
somewhat difficult to place the tragedy of
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon within one single
pertinent political context, for Lebanon's
enduring conflicts, thus political alliances, are
in a constant state of flux. So when such events
concerning Palestinian refugees in Lebanon take
place, the issue becomes almost entirely hostage
to political analysis and considerations and hyped
factional sensitivities.
The challenge is
hardly how to tackle the underpinnings of such
dramas, or urgently to examine the relationship
between economic, social and other forms of
alienation and political violence. The priority
becomes how, once again, to conceal the festering
problem.
But the problem will not
disappear on its own. In Lebanon, there are
450,000 United Nations-registered refugees, who
subsist in poverty, in 12 concentration-camp-like
physical entities, denied basic rights and lacking
even a nominal political horizon. They were mostly
forced out of Palestine between 1947 and 1948 by
Zionist militias, which later formed the Israeli
army. It was no accident that Nahr al-Bared was
established in 1949. But since then, few if any
substantial efforts have been made to remedy some
of the numerous problems created by that violent
dispossession.
Years later, Palestinian
refugees become embroiled in Lebanon's existing
conflicts, first by accident - since it happened
that the majority of the refugees are Sunni
Muslims - and later by design, especially after
the Palestine Liberation Organization's departure
from Jordan in the early 1970s. After the Israeli
war on Lebanon in 1982 - accompanied by such
infamous massacres as Sabra and Shatila, among
others - the fate of the refugees worsened,
reaching the point of nearly complete neglect.
In the summer of 2007, the Lebanese army
clashed with an extremist grouping, Fatah
al-Islam, which had earlier moved to Nahr
al-Bared. According to Amnesty International, "The
violence caused considerable destruction to the
camp, forcibly displaced the camp's 30,000
residents and led to at least 400 deaths,
including 42 civilians and 166 Lebanese soldiers."
"Considerable destruction" is putting it
mildly. The camp was literally "reduced to
rubble", as described in a report in Lebanon's The
Daily Star. Many media outlets reported the story
as if it were just another fight between the army
and an al-Qaeda-inspired group, without making
much fuss about the fact that within the confines
of that lethal fight, hundreds of families barely
subsisted, mostly unemployed, impoverished and
homeless.
Five years have passed since
Nahr al-Bared was destroyed, yet many of its
residents remain stranded between an old refugee
status - as Palestinians who were forced out or
fled Zionist violence in Palestine in 1948 - and
new refugee status, that of fleeing from one
refugee camp to another. This condition of old-new
destitution is highlighted in but not unique to
Nahr al-Bared; it is a shared experience by many
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
Despite
the multiple tragedies that have struck the
dwellers of Lebanon's refugee camps throughout the
years (which provide enough insight to the nature
of the Palestinian refugee problem in the country
- thus offering obvious clues to its remedy), much
of the political discussion is devoid of any
substance.
Lebanon-based US writer
Franklin Lamb quoted a statement by army commander
General Jean Qahwaji that a "thorough [and] swift
investigation will determine the perpetrators and
prevent a similar incident from occurring in the
future". Lamb rightly comments: "Given past
experience, few believe the investigation will be
serious or even completed."
The country's
interior minister, for his part, conveniently
discounted the obvious link between the clashes in
Nahr al-Bared and Ein al-Hilweh as mere
"coincidence" (Akhbar al-Youm, June 20, as
referenced by Lamb). Palestinian PLO and Fatah
official Azzam al-Ahmad told The Daily Star during
a recent visit to Lebanon that "regional powers
are exploiting the hardship of Palestinian
refugees ... to push their own agendas in
Lebanon". He insisted that those powers did not
include Syria.
Palestinian refugees
continue to be victimized by a bewildering
political landscape and unmistakable
discrimination by the state under the pretense
that they are temporary "guests" in Lebanon. Now
even third-generation "guests" of a UN-registered
population of nearly 450,000 refugees are denied
home ownership, inheritance of land or real
estate, and are barred from many professions. That
state of nearly complete economic stagnation has
resulted in socioeconomic regression that places
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon at a very low
standing with little hope for the future.
In its report released on June 20 to
coincide with World Refugee Day, American Near
East Refugee Aid resolved: "The Palestinian
refugee camps in Lebanon are considered the worst
of the region's refugee camps in terms of poverty,
health, education and living conditions." ANERA
reported that two out of three refugees subsisted
on less than US$6 a day, and that discrimination
against them is expressed in multiple areas from
health, to education, to housing to other aspects.
It is important to note the role that
Israel has played in the perpetual suffering of
Palestinian refugees everywhere, but extending
that to include the inhumane treatment of those in
Lebanon no longer suffices. As in the case of
refugees the world over, Palestinians must be
repatriated to their homes and compensated for
their losses, pain and suffering. Until that goal
is achieved, refugees must be treated with dignity
and respect regardless of the political
calculation of their host countries.
The
Palestinian refugees' predicament in Lebanon must
be handled with decidedness and urgency. It is a
responsibility that ought to be shared among the
Lebanese government, the Palestinian leadership,
the Arab League and the United Nations. Any more
neglect and the potential crisis could morph into
a full-fledged one.
Ramzy Baroud
(www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally
syndicated columnist and the editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My
Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story
(Pluto Press, London).
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