Lebanonwire.com | Palestinian refugees hope Lebanese election will improve their lives

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June 4, 2005

Palestinian refugees hope Lebanese election will improve their lives
by Joelle Bassoul

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Palestinian refugees living in squalid and overcrowded camps in Lebanon dare to hope the country's legislative elections will directly improve their lives.

"I have been monitoring the elections to see if they will bring change," said Mohammed al-Daud, 21, outside the Chatila camp in Beirut where portraits of candidates overcrowd those of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Some 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in 12 refugee compounds in southern Lebanon, where conditions are often harsh and permanent citizenship is denied to all.

Fouad Abed, 36, complained that the candidate he was rooting for lost in the first part of the four-stage elections that took place May 29.

"He would have helped improve the situation in the camps," he said.

Houses are built with breeze blocks, and many look dangerously close to crumbling. Residents, who by law cannot go to state hospitals or schools and are banned from holding certain jobs, must make do with meager handouts from the UN refugee agency UNRWA.

The Ain el-Helweh camp, on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon, is the largest of Lebanon's refugee compounds.

"We must smuggle nails into the camp because the (Lebanese) authorities ban us from building," a resident who declined to be named said in his modest house as a glimmer of daylight shone in from the single window of his living room.

The Lebanese army controls the outskirts of the camps but is not deployed inside the compounds.

Suheil Natur, an official of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, speaks of the "inhuman treatment" of refugees in Lebanon.

"Palestinians have no rights in Lebanon. The camps are islands separated from the rest of the Lebanese society," Natur said.

"Many Lebanese, even those opposed to the Palestinians, understand that the inhuman treatment of the refugees cannot continue," he added.

Critics charge that nothing has been done to address the refugees' living conditions since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

But the issue has presented itself anew, following the adoption by the UN Security Council last September of Resolution 1559 calling for Syrian troop withdrawal from Lebanon.

"We have started making contacts to set up a unified command aimed at opening negotiations with the Lebanese government," said Munir Maqdah, a military chief of the Fatah movement.

According to Natur, the negotiations would strive to find a solution to the "light weapons" that Palestinians continue to carry inside their camps.

During the civil war the camps were ruled by Palestinian guerrillas. Today they are seen by many Lebanese as "havens for outlaws," Natur said.In a bid to clean up their image, the Palestinians of Chatila held May elections to choose an 11-member council entrusted with looking after their
camp.

The elections were held after Syrian intelligence agents, who controlled the camps, pulled out as part of the April withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, a Chatila resident said.

"We want the Lebanese government to improve our living conditions but they must first recognise our right to return to our homes in Palestine," a school director said.

The "right to return" is as much a quest for young Palestinians born and raised in Lebanon as it is for their elders.

"People live in their homeland. For us, our homeland lives in our hearts," Abed said.