I did a story on the ‘double refugees’ (first Palestine, now Nahr el-Bared) but you’d need to subscribe to my paper if you’d want to read that one.
The mood has changed among the Palestinians the past two years. Before, when you’d ask what their ultimate goal was, you’d always receive the standard answer; ‘Return to Palestine.’ It was the magic credo, ‘The Right to Return’.
I am not sure what caused the change, but the past month it came up trice during conversations with Palestinians of Nahr el-Bared, Bedawi and Ain el-Heloue. They all just wanted to live in peace, and get on with a ‘normal’ life. If that would be a normal life in Lebanon, than so be it , they’d be satisfied with that. “I don’t care about going back to Palestine. If the government would give me papers that I could work and live outside the camp, I would be very happy. I wouldn’t want to go back", one of them said. Others mentioned (literally) “forget about this Right to Return. It’s never going to happen. We might as well make a real life here instead of waiting for the impossible.”
In the 15-something years that I have lived here, I have never heard a Palestinian say it. They may have thought it, but they never said out loud that it was a lost cause. Like it was a taboo. But we are looking at the fourth generation of refugees now. Only the elder remember their village in Palestine, and they are dying out quickly (life has been tough on them). It’s been 59 years, after all. The young don’t even have pictures to look at, because in those these, cameras were not a common good. (Here is an interesting web site on the Palestinian exodus from the Palestinian National Authority. Check out the photo gallery, it shows you the very early camps.)
The funny thing was that one of the Nahr el-Bared inhabitants, an accountant, showed me a video of his neighborhood in Nahr el-Bared, made on the first day of the fighting. “I had the feeling that something might go wrong,” he said. “When our grandparents left their homes in Palestine, they thought it would be just for a while. So I made a movie of my house and the neighborhood, just in case.” It turns out he wasn’t wrong. It is doubtful that he’ll be able to return any time soon. If ever.
The problem is of course that do not have much chance on a ‘normal’ life in Lebanon. My, even the Lebanese barely lead a normal life these days. The Palestinians of course lead an even less than normal life, due to the 101 restrictions that they face. There are a large number of professions they are barred from (hair dresser being one of them), and this causes an in-equality in income that basically also bars them from access to health care, education and housing. They have to do with services offered in the camp by the UNWRA. Now these services may be for free, and the UNWRA does its best, but its not your top of the line stuff. Schools in Bedawi for instance, run double shifts, in order to provide education to all the camp children.
If there were given Lebanese papers, they could live a normal life, they say, but it does not look like that is going to happen any time soon. Lebanese I talk to say it is because this would shift the confessional balance. The addition of half a million sunnis (the large majority of Palestinians are sunnis. The christian Palestinians for the most part did receive Lebanese papers a long time ago) would not be welcomed by both the christians (who’ve had an issue with the Palestinians being here for a long time) and Hezbollah (shia).
The mood has changed among the Palestinians the past two years. Before, when you’d ask what their ultimate goal was, you’d always receive the standard answer; ‘Return to Palestine.’ It was the magic credo, ‘The Right to Return’.I am not sure what caused the change, but the past month it came up trice during conversations with Palestinians of Nahr el-Bared, Bedawi and Ain el-Heloue. They all just wanted to live in peace, and get on with a ‘normal’ life. If that would be a normal life in Lebanon, than so be it , they’d be satisfied with that. “I don’t care about going back to Palestine. If the government would give me papers that I could work and live outside the camp, I would be very happy. I wouldn’t want to go back", one of them said. Others mentioned (literally) “forget about this Right to Return. It’s never going to happen. We might as well make a real life here instead of waiting for the impossible.”
In the 15-something years that I have lived here, I have never heard a Palestinian say it. They may have thought it, but they never said out loud that it was a lost cause. Like it was a taboo. But we are looking at the fourth generation of refugees now. Only the elder remember their village in Palestine, and they are dying out quickly (life has been tough on them). It’s been 59 years, after all. The young don’t even have pictures to look at, because in those these, cameras were not a common good. (Here is an interesting web site on the Palestinian exodus from the Palestinian National Authority. Check out the photo gallery, it shows you the very early camps.)
The funny thing was that one of the Nahr el-Bared inhabitants, an accountant, showed me a video of his neighborhood in Nahr el-Bared, made on the first day of the fighting. “I had the feeling that something might go wrong,” he said. “When our grandparents left their homes in Palestine, they thought it would be just for a while. So I made a movie of my house and the neighborhood, just in case.” It turns out he wasn’t wrong. It is doubtful that he’ll be able to return any time soon. If ever.
The problem is of course that do not have much chance on a ‘normal’ life in Lebanon. My, even the Lebanese barely lead a normal life these days. The Palestinians of course lead an even less than normal life, due to the 101 restrictions that they face. There are a large number of professions they are barred from (hair dresser being one of them), and this causes an in-equality in income that basically also bars them from access to health care, education and housing. They have to do with services offered in the camp by the UNWRA. Now these services may be for free, and the UNWRA does its best, but its not your top of the line stuff. Schools in Bedawi for instance, run double shifts, in order to provide education to all the camp children.
If there were given Lebanese papers, they could live a normal life, they say, but it does not look like that is going to happen any time soon. Lebanese I talk to say it is because this would shift the confessional balance. The addition of half a million sunnis (the large majority of Palestinians are sunnis. The christian Palestinians for the most part did receive Lebanese papers a long time ago) would not be welcomed by both the christians (who’ve had an issue with the Palestinians being here for a long time) and Hezbollah (shia).
Right now, all they ask for is the Right to Return to Nahr el-Bared. It does not seem to be in the cards anytime soon.
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Voor de Nederlandse lezers; hier is het verhaal over de bom explosie van 13 juni. (This is the car bomb of June 13 in Dutch. A similar version in English can be found here)
3 comments:
I simply don't get the fear of disturbing the sectarian balance which many Lebanese hold for real.
Like i wrote in my blog a few days ago, Palestinians wouldn't need to get voting rights and all. A simple work permit and residence permit would suffice. Treat the Palestinians like any other foreigner is being treated in the Arab world.
Totally agree with you.
Riemer,
That's a great idea Reimer, let's start by being like the "rest of the arab world" where they are not allowed to carry their own weapons eh? And by the way why should the palestinain refugee problem be limited to the arab world, it is a humanitarian issue and thus even you guys should shoulder some of the responsibility for a devestating human tragedy.
This is going ot sound callous, but you didn't go through what the palestinans did to us during the civil war, the lebanese just don't trust them anymore (and i'm saying this as a sunni muslim).
Now on top of everything else, rightly or wrongly, they are precieved as having harboured these criminals in their midst, and thus directly or indirectly helped them to grow and get stronger.
The sad truth is, the Lebanese just want some time off from being on the frontlines for everything, it's somebody else's turn now.
As for giving them citizenship, a better equipped country financially would do a much better job, and incase you think they will integrate well, I haven't yet met a Jordanian palestinan (75% of the population) who doesn't still say when I asked that they are palestinian first and Jordanian second, and that just wouldn't be good enough if you're Lebanese.
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