Refugee crisis threatens Lebanon

Martin Asser has returned to Lebanon, a year after covering the war between Hezbollah and Israel for the BBC News website. His series of articles examines how the country has fared since that conflict.

In his fourth report, he looks at the Palestinian refugee camp crisis.

Some 30,000 refugees have fled the fighting at Nahr al-Bared camp

Lebanon plays host to an estimated 400,000 Palestinian refugees, mostly descendants of those who left what is now Israel, with a dwindling population of refugees who actually fled or were forced from their homes in 1948-49.

These make up a small minority of the global Palestinian population, but their predicament has perhaps been the harshest of the whole diaspora.

Largely on the sidelines of the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, Palestinians have certainly not been spared the political and security upheaval that has racked Lebanon over the last year.

One of their refuges, tent cities that over the decades turned into a teeming ghettos, lies in ruins.

Lebanese troops have been battling a small group of jihadi outsiders in Nahr al-Bared camp, forcing some 6,000 families to swap their insalubrious slum for something much worse.

The exodus has raised all sorts of fears among Lebanese, who are well aware how incendiary unrest and tension among the Palestinian refugees in their country can be.

Sectarian threat

Although a significant number in the host country feel a shared destiny with the Palestinians, many others see a threat to their national identity.

This is because the refugees are majority Sunni Muslims, while Lebanon is among the world's most religiously complex places. Eighteen recognised religious communities coexist, with power shared on sectarian lines.

The people of Nahr al-Bared demand to be allowed back to their camp - I would rather sleep on the rubble of my house than here Abed Swaydan

Some members of the Maronite community - which holds the powerful presidency and is a wellspring of Lebanese Christian nationalism - have felt their position particularly threatened since the refugees arrived in 1948-49.

Tensions were exacerbated in the 1970s, when the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel used Lebanon as a launch-pad, becoming a major cause of the 15-year civil war which started in 1975.

The ghosts of 1975-90 - not to mention those of 1948-49 - could be rising again with the explosion of violence at Nahr al-Bared.

Some displaced inhabitants, now sheltering in schools in nearby Beddawi camp, told me it was like being hit by a second nakba, or catastrophe, like the one they suffered with the creation of Israel.

One man in his 60s even said: "It's 100 times worse than the loss of Palestine. We worked our whole lives to build up Nahr al-Bared, and now this has happened."

"We should be allowed to go and settle in Denmark, or Canada, or the US, anywhere but here."

Painful realisation

But that is not the commonly-held view in Beddawi's UN-run schools, where up to 50 people share each dusty classroom in atrocious conditions.

"The people of Nahr al-Bared demand to be allowed back to their camp. I would rather sleep on the rubble of my house than here," says Abed Swaydan.

Profile: Fatah al-Islam Obstacles to peace: Refugees

It is an article of faith for millions of Palestinian refugees that they must be allowed the "right of return" to their homes in what they still regard as Palestine - a hope, if realised, which would sound Israel's death-knell as a Jewish majority state.

Sharing the same classroom, Ibrahim Ghrayib adds: "We've been told they want to redesign the camp like a normal town. No! We want it restored as it was, with all the marks of a refugee camp, so we do not lose touch with our cause."

Things have indeed reached a new low if the Palestinians of Lebanon are demanding a "right of return" not to Israel, but to their poverty-stricken lives in alleyways so narrow that the sun barely penetrates.

Discrimination

It has been a hostile world outside the camp, because of official and unofficial Lebanese attitudes.

There is, of course, the history of violence, most notably the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres.

Refugees bed down in classrooms at the nearby Beddawi camp

Palestinian refugees are also barred from 73 professions, allowed only menial jobs, so they don't upset Lebanon's employment market.

They cannot own property or use state health care and many say they face daily discrimination from the authorities.

"I might as well be in prison," said a Nahr al-Bared exile staying at a Lebanese school outside Beddawi.

"If I want to go to Beirut, it could take eight hours because every security checkpoint delays me because I have Palestinian papers."

As government troops try to wipe out Fatah al-Islam die-hards in Nahr al-Bared, the best the Palestinians of Lebanon can hope for is a swift end - and that other extremist groups do not infiltrate other camps.

But the camps have been tempting a lair for such groups, being out of bounds to the Lebanese security forces.

Theories are flying around regarding how they got into Nahr al-Bared.

Some Lebanese blame Syria for trying to destabilise the country. Some refugees accuse the government of turning a blind eye, at first, to give its forces an excuse to go in and disarm the camp.

If that is the case it is a plan that has spectacularly and bloodily backfired.

At least 88 soldiers, 60 militants and 40 civilians have died in seven weeks of fighting. There is a worsening humanitarian crisis for 35,000 displaced people and every possibility that the contagion could spread.

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Read Martin Asser's other reports:

Southern Lebanon's slow recovery

Rumours and violence fuel Lebanon anxiety

One year on: Lebanon political paralysis