According to the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the number of those who have sought refuge in the Lebanon has doubled since the beginning of August, and at the moment there are 73,000 registered Syrians, and those still undergoing identification who are about 20,000. As the prime minister reminded the U.N. Assembly, the country is still addressing the consequences of the 1948 war and the Palestinian Diaspora.
In the Lebanon there are today still 12 camps filled with refugees from those days, mainly Palestinians, representing 10% of the country’s entire population. Now, however, there are more and more Lebanese from the south who fled the 2006 “33 Day War” as well as Iraqis and Syrians. The refugee camps are called Beddawi, Burj Barajneh, Burj Shemali, Dbayeh, Ein El Hillweh, El Buss, Mar Elias, Mieh Mieh, Nahr El Bared, Rashidieh, Shatila and Wavel.
Shatila is set within Beirut’s urban fabric, in the southern suburbs, and is sadly better known for the 1982 massacre. Nowadays its population has not only doubled compared to thirty years ago, but it has also diversified. According to the People’s Committee, only 60% of the camp’s inhabitants are now of Palestinian origin, with the remaining 40% consisting of Syrians, Lebanese, Kurds, and Roma.
Burj Barajneh, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, is one of the camps set up by the International Red Cross in 1948, and bore an enormous burden during the civil war. It remains one of the most densely populated camps and one of those in which conditions are most difficult. In 2009 the European Union activated a project to replace the sewage system and reorganise the water supply, a problem shared by all refugee camps.
Close to the capital, 12 km to the east, there is also Dbayeh, set up in 1956 to host Palestinian refugees arriving from Galilee. In 1990, at the end of the civil war, it was mostly destroyed. The small camp called Mar Elias is also not far from Beirut and was founded by the Mar Elias Orthodox convent in 1952.
Beddawi was set up in 1955, 5 km north of Tripoli. Water and sewage systems were recently renovated by the UNRWA, although the camp is still suffering the consequence of the exodus from the nearby Nahr El Bared camp during the 2007 clashes between Fatah Al Islam militias and the Lebanese army, when its population rose from 15,000 to 30,000, although nowadays the numbers have returned to previous levels.
Three kilometres east of Tyre there is Burj Shemali, also set up in 1948, and since 1955 under a U.N. mandate. Most of the buildings destroyed during the civil war have been rebuilt using cement blocks and tin roofs. There are now about 19,000 people registered as living there. Here too drains have been financed by the European Union and according to a UNRWA report the camp has four clean water wells.
El Buss, one of the smallest camps, is instead less than two kilometres south of Tyre. It had originally been set up in 1939 by the French government to host Armenian refugees and started to also host Palestinians after 1950.
In the same area there is also Rashidieh, which consists of two parts; an older part built in 1936 by the French government for Armenian refugees and a more recent part built by the U.N. agency in 1963 to host refugees evacuated from the Gouraud Baalbek camp. This camp still has no sewage system.
Ein el-Hillweh is near Sidon and is now the largest refugee camp in the Lebanon as far as size and population are concerned (47,500 people registered). It was almost completely destroyed in 1990 by the violence during the civil war, and rebuilt by the UNRWA between 1993 and 1994. Built in 1954 Mieh Mieh is also close to Sidon, just 4 kilometres from the city.
Near Baalbek, 90 km from Beirut, there is Wavel, an old French army barracks occupied by refugees after the 1948 exodus and still today under a UNRWA mandate. It is the camp where conditions are the harshest due to the low winter temperatures.
What all camps share are the conditions in which refugees live. Amnesty International has often reported elements of discrimination against Palestinians who are not permitted to own property or, still today, access 72 different professions. Furthermore the lack of access to state services, such as education and health care, puts them in a very difficult position as well as one binding them to United Nations protection programmes offering minimum benefits and basic services, but certainly not permitting emancipation from a situation of subsistence. In 2010 the Lebanese parliament approved a refugee labour law that has never been applied. Palestinians were supposed to more easily obtain work permits to be normally used outside the camps and have access to health insurance, although some professions remained forbidden, such as the legal professions, engineering and the medical profession.
It is no coincidence that over the years the approach to the future and to remembrance of Palestinians residing in the Lebanon has changed. The myth of a return is still present, but the new generations seem less disillusioned regarding a future beyond the borders within which the children and grandchildren of refugees were born and found themselves living, in extremely difficult conditions and under immense social pressure caused also by overcrowding and the fact that it is impossible to obtain identity papers and the economic base allowing mobility and real capacity to choose their future.
A few young people who have managed to complete a degree and find a job, return to the camps to help the children, as does the Dream of Refugees group, five 30-year-olds who have decided to open an educational and social centre in Shatila. With volunteer work, and a small fee students can afford, they implement their projects with advanced study, theatre and dance courses.
During the past year, many Syrians fleeing the civil war have moved into the camps. Some have been hosted in the homes of local families, others have rented houses. The fate of Lebanon, and that of its refugees, is inexorably linked to Syria’s destiny. Assad’s regime even has allies ein the camps, such as the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as support from the Lebanese belonging to Hezbollah and Amal, and also among Christian Maronites. Although officially the government is attempting to remain super partes, instead of asserting its sovereignty in a country that is linked to Damascus by a cooperation agreement signed in 1991 after the end of the civil war.
There is also an anti-Assad front, which is expressed abroad by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, son of Rafiq, who left the Lebanon sometime ago, but that within the country, and especially along the border, causes tension between insurgents and those loyal to the regime, between anti-Assad Lebanese and supporters of the government in Damascus. The emblem of these tensions is Arsal, a Sunni town that is an example of the bond between these two countries. Like other Sunni towns it has sided with the Syrian insurgents and for months its inhabitants have been hosting many families of refugees. In this case welcoming refugees goes against the rules of the 1991 agreement with which both countries committed to not support those acting against the interests of the other. There is also a dual link uniting the two countries in the armed forces which have respectively enlisted soldiers of both nationalities for some time. It is a political union between systems that can continuously become division and tension in the “blood pact” between two peoples.
Translated by Francesca Simmons
Image: Refugees in UNRWA camp in Baalbek, Lebanon. United Nations Photo