The Struggle of Twice-Displaced Refugees: Palestinians Fleeing Syria to Lebanon

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Nov 11, 2012 Syria
[Entrance to Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. Image by l`Ifpo via Flickr] [Entrance to Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. Image by l`Ifpo via Flickr]

The Struggle of Twice-Displaced Refugees: Palestinians Fleeing Syria to Lebanon

By : Dina Amer

Meesar Lahan’s personal story represents thousands of Palestinian refugees filtering into the Shatila refugee camp of Lebanon from war-stricken Syria. Their move to Lebanon represents a second displacement (the first being from Palestine), and many of these refugees are giving up hope, some even considering a return with their families back to Syria. The labyrinth of discrimination and segregation specific to the already existing Palestinian refugee population of Lebanon has made many of the new arrivals feel that Syria, despite the violence, offers more dignity and a greater ability to live within their economic means.

Between Violence and Discrimination

In the narrow passageways of Shatila, one of Lebanon`s most dire refugee camps, Meesar Lahan gazes through weary eyes at the trapping vertical slums that surround her. In early September, she fled her violence-ridden home in Syria`s Yarmouk Camp, the largest Palestinian refugee camp for the approximately 455,000 Palestinian refugees living in the country. She left behind every semblance of her life apart from her children: fifteen-year-old Ahmed, ten-year-old Haytham, and two-year-old baby Mirna.

In refugee camps across Lebanon, these “new” Palestinian refugees are coming face-to-face with the cruel historical and contemporary realities of discrimination, segregation, and underdevelopment of the already existing 400,000 Palestinian refugees spread out across Lebanon. Syrian nationals and Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria escape the same decimating violence, yet as soon as they enter Lebanon’s border they are faced with an entirely different set of regulations. The stateless status of the nearly 7,000 Palestinian refugees that have escaped Syria thus far requires them to pay approximately seventeen dollars for a fifteen-day visa, or thirty-three dollars for a non-renewable one-month visa after which they are expected to leave or face fines for overstaying. They are also subject to the same longstanding discriminatory laws posed against their Palestinian compatriots already resettled there. These include exclusion from access to Lebanese job opportunities at large (limiting them to mostly menial labor positions), schools, healthcare, and other basic civil rights and services. Such a context stands in sharp contrast to that of passport-holding Syrians, whom while experiencing their own set of grim conditions, are granted a six month residency visa which can be extended free of charge. They thus effectively enjoy the right to work without permits (in accordance to a long-established agreement), and self-stabilize in Lebanon without the constraints imposed on Palestinian refugees as a consequence of their stateless status.

Furthermore, aid resources are even more limited for those Palestinian refugees being displaced a second time—and are now crossing the border from Syria into Lebanon—than they are for Syrian refugees. This is primarily because Palestinian refugees residing in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon fall under the specific jurisdiction of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Palestinian refugees in other countries—or refugees of other origins in all countries—fall under the jurisdiction of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provided they are able to register with said organization.

As Meesar quietly paces through the trash-filled streets clutching baby Mirna at her hip, she braces herself for re-adjustment to Shatila. Hopeless streets are not novel to her. Born in Shatila herself, Messar escaped in 1982 during one of the most tragic episodes in Palestinian refugee history. The hellish 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre of more than eight hundred Palestinian civilians left this area in disarray after Israeli forces cordoned off the exits of the camp whilst a right-wing Lebanese Phalange militia executed a massacre. Few survived to tell the story.

Meesar escaped but has not forgotten. She was a mere toddler during the massacre.  Meesar ruminates about the irony of her return with her own children: “I ran away from this slum with my family when I was Mirna`s age because of the war, and now I am back with Mirna, escaping another war. Life is crazy.” Mirna, a feeble-bodied toddler with apprehensive brown eyes, breaks into a frenzied panic attack at the sound of a loud noise, her tiny ears rattled by far too familiar sounds of shelling outside her home in Yarmuk.

The Rising Cost of Safety

Meesar made the decision to flee the Yarmouk Camp in Syria when it became enrapt as a  shelling target of both the Syrian regime and the Free Syrian Army. Her husband, a house painter, gave Meesar the family savings to flee for refuge in Lebanon, while he remained in Syria. Meesar and her three children now share a room with another family of four at a total monthly rate of $250, triple the amount she spent to house her family in Syria. “With a quarter of a dollar I could get bread for the whole family. Here, it costs me four dollars.” With no ability to earn income as a Palestinian refugee, Meesar is left with few choices.

Her current troubles of displacement are shared with approximately seven-thousand other Palestinian refugees that have fled Syria, according to UNRWA`s list of registered persons. Hopeful for better living conditions than in war-torn Syria, Palestinians like Meesar struggle to adjust to life in a camp that has limited resources. But the ongoing crisis of Palestinians fleeing regional turmoil is not a new happening, as warfare in Iraq, Kuwait, and Lebanon has shown in the past. Yet, the tragedy is magnified, as a genuine long-term solution has never been implemented despite the cyclical nature of this humanitarian catastrophe.

Lebanese economics play a role in the obstacles Palestinians face in Shatila. Lebanon enjoys a higher GDP than Syria, which translates to a higher cost of living. While Syria has a stronger provisioning of social safety nets, Lebanon has a free market-oriented economy and lacks many of the social welfare benefits fo-those living beneath the poverty line that were provided in Syria. Additionally, under the Syrian legal system, Palestinian refugees had access to job opportunities, public education, healthcare, and other government services.

The violent displacement, coupled with the sudden absence of many basic provisions has left most of these “new” Palestinian refugees in shock. Many families have even considered returning to the war zone of Syria to escape their new-found financial strife. At the Masna‘ crossing of the Lebanese-Syrian border, a different family of four returns to Syria, having no choice but to return to their war-ravaged homes. Refugee and father Ahmed Shehata explains, “I have no choice but to take my family back. I’m not allowed to work here [in Lebanon] as a Palestinian and we are here alone. How can I support my family?”

Aid: A Drying Well

Some Palestinian refugees, like Ahmed Kollak, wonder about the lack of reciprocity of humanitarian gestures. “In 2006, during the Israeli-Lebanese conflict, we opened our homes to the Lebanese refugees, but now we are on our own here.” Some noted that they have not yet seen the promised aid from the UNRWA. “UNRWA comes and registers our names, but since we have arrived we have not once received any aid from them. An Islamic NGO has provided mattresses.”

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are serviced exclusively by UNRWA, which struggles with a limited budget to offer support. UNRWA`s spokesperson Hoda Samra highlighted the difficulty that double displaced Palestinians encounter to find work:

We have had experience with Palestinians who were twice refugees, twice displaced. From a human point of view, it is very difficult to watch this humiliation occur again and again. Their plight is never-ending. These people have lost everything and have to start from scratch yet again.”

Yet, Samra explains that the agency lacks the funding to provide more support for refugees at this time:

We cannot do much for them. We are providing primary health care and education for refugees in our schools. We are doing all that we can but we know it is not nearly enough. We cannot do our jobs because of the serious dwindling budget.

One problem Samra cites is the number of Palestinian refugees from Syria who are remaining in Lebanon past the expiration dates of their permits. These refugees, if apprehended, must pay a fine of thirty-three dollars to renew their status. This highlights an important contrast with Syrian refugees. Another UNRWA employee who chose not to be named explains that

There is a discrepancy between the treatment of Syrian refugees and the Palestinians refugees fleeing Syria. The Palestinians` visas need constant renewal; they end up paying until they can`t afford it and going underground in Lebanon. It is no secret that the Lebanese government`s polices towards Palestinians are inherently discriminatory and marginalizing.

Displaced refugees have nowhere to relocate to, yet the agency has no funding coming in from international donors to continue support. UNRWA`s position is that it is strenuously and tirelessly trying to raise funds but has struggled the past three years to deal with the organization`s hundred million dollar deficit. “We start every year not knowing if we will be able to survive the last three months of the year. We are facing a chronic and acute funding crisis,” says UNRWA Director of Communications Chris Gunness.

As Meesar quiets her child, still pacing the alleyways of Shatila`s shelters, she reveals that distress has increased, not dissipated. “I am worried for the children. School has already begun and UNRWA has told us the schools are full. We were risking the ultimate price of fatality by staying in Syria, but here the cost of living makes survival just as much of a struggle if not more.”

Thousands of Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria to Lebanon face this horrifying daily paradox. For them, the fate of discrimination and inequality in Lebanon is just as dire as the fate of violence in Syria. Meesar grapples to understand this displacement:

The lives we established in Syria became our home. The Lebanese government allows a Syrian refugee to work, to stay for six months, and to renew their visiting permit for free. Why is it different for the Palestinians?
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412