A tragedy of 450,000 Palestinians in Lebanon

Khalil Ali sipped his morning coffee after having breakfast, put his big old shoes on and braced to walk the usual three-km distance to start his daily work at an isolated farm.

As the sole supporter of six children, his wife and his mother, Khalil struggles for more than 13 hours a day in the scorching summer sun and biting winter cold weather.

Khalil works for a Lebanese landlord in the hilltop village of Mieh Mieh in south Lebanon. He considers himself lucky as most other Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon are jobless in the absence of business opportunities for the refugees.

“I am battling every day to feed my family...it is a very difficult job but I have no choice...I think I am lucky because most of the Palestinians I know do not work,” he said.

“We are living in extremely difficult conditions in Lebanon...we are not allowed to take government jobs and opportunities in the private sector are very limited in the absence of real business growth...priority is also given to the Lebanese.”

Khalil is among nearly 450,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon after they were expelled from their homes in Palestine by Israeli invasion forces in 1948.

More than two thirds of those refugees are crammed in tiny shabby camps while the rest have managed to make money abroad and move to cities.

Besides the ban on government jobs, Palestinians are barred from many other sectors, including land purchase and property ownership. They are also not allowed to have their own taxi cabs and are still barred from public schools.

A large part of the refugees rely on United Nations aid involving small monthly rations of flour, rice, sugar and other consumer items.

Economists estimate unemployment among the Palestinians in Lebanon at more than 85 per cent while those who work are not paid enough to meet soaring domestic needs because of a steady rise in inflation and persistent manipulations by traders.

“I have saved for years to open this little shop but hardly fetches enough to feed my family,” said Hassan Ahmed, a shopkeeper in Mieh Mieh refugee camp.

Unemployment and poverty are underscored in almost every lane in Mieh Mieh of around 5,000 people and the nearby refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh, the largest among Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian camps with around 150,000 refugees.

Most young men in Mieh Mieh are seen daily strolling near their shabby houses or sitting at the camp’s only coffee shop before retiring home late night.

Misery mixed with anger could be noticed on their faces for lack of money and jobs. When you ask them, they blame Israel, the Arab League and Lebanon. Some of them are so angry that they blame the whole world for their tragedy.

“We have been forgotten and ignored by the entire world...no one cares for us any more...some say we are a social and economic burden on Lebanon but what can we do...the Israelis took our country and the disaster is that they are rewarded while we have been deprived of justice,” said Imad Mansour.

Besides the tiny monthly relief aid, the United Nations has opened small health centres for the Palestinians in the camps but their medical resources have remained limited.\

 In the absence of jobs inside Lebanon, Palestinians either rely on their relatives working in the oil-rich Gulf or on monthly wages provided by some Palestinian guerrilla factions to old members. A few of them have managed to open small businesses inside the camp, where some Palestinians are still armed.

 Such conditions have forced thousands of young Palestinians to migrate to Europe and other countries. A few of those who are left in the camps without job are seen fanning out in streets to sell cigarettes, vegetables and other goods.

 The influx of hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing the conflict at home has only aggravated the ordeal of the Palestinians.

“Many Lebanese employers are now giving jobs to the Syrians who accept much less money...the Syrian war has greatly affected us,” said Mahmoud Hussein.

 In a recent study, Ghassan Karam, a lecturer at the US Pace University in New York, said the Palestinians are deprived from all political and civil rights in Lebanon and scoffed at government justifications that this would support the Palestinian cause.

 “It would be difficult to argue that the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are not being treated as second class citizens and even as undesirables…... and the irony is that it is argued that all of these harsh measures are designed to benefit the victims…….. how can anyone make such an argument and expect to be taken seriously,” he said.

 “The fact of the matter is that the Lebanese are opposed to integrating the Palestinian refugees for purely narrow and selfish reasons.”

The sun had already dived into the azure Mediterranean Sea ahead and darkness started to engulf the narrow alleys of Mieh Mieh camp when Khaili Ali returned home. He was soaking, his face was tanned by the warm May sun and he looked exhausted after a 13-hour work through the day.

“I am really very tired today…like every day..but I have no choice as I have to support my family,” he said as he wiped his forehead after a long walk back home. “It’s not only my problem but the problem of all Palestinians here…we feel that there is no present and no future…as if we have been forgotten by all.”

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