In the Shatila refugee camp at the gates of Beirut, young Palestinians have only shattered dreams, and for many a single desire: to leave a country that does not want them.
“There is a form of despair,” Nirmeen Hazineh, a 25-year-old Palestinian, a descendant of survivors of the “Nakba”, the “catastrophe” that the creation of Israel represented for the Arabs in 1948, told AFP. synonymous with exodus for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
“Emigration is the only solution. You talk to anyone, they will tell you I want to leave, legally or illegally,” adds the young woman with a sunny smile.
Nirmeen also wants to leave, “to a country that respects me, that gives me a chance, a job”, lists this graduate in sociology, who cannot find work in Lebanon because of the restrictions imposed on the Palestinians.
In the alleys of the Shatila camp, portraits of militants recently killed in the occupied West Bank rub shoulders with those of the historic leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Arafat, highlighting the organic link between the Palestinians of “the interior” and those of the diaspora.
About 250,000 Palestinian refugees reside in Lebanon, according to an estimate by the UN, which however specifies that nearly double are registered with its services, which do not take into account deaths and departures.
“Without perspective and deprived of their fundamental rights, Palestinian refugees try to emigrate when possible,” said Dorothee Klaus, director in Lebanon of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa).
“We don’t enjoy our most basic rights,” confirms Mohammad Abdel Hafiz, a Palestinian Civil Defense volunteer, who rides a moped through the camp’s alleys, which are too narrow for cars.
“I would have liked to be an engineer or a doctor, but I cannot work in these fields”, he protests, the Lebanese authorities having prohibited refugees from exercising 39 professions, in particular in the fields of medicine, law or engineering.
At 29, he dreams of going to the West, but the chances of obtaining a visa are almost nil and the clandestine crossings dangerous. Three youths from the camp died after their boat sank off Lebanon in September, recalls Mohammad.
“They died because they wanted to secure their future,” he said.
Walid Othman, 33, for his part, would have liked to study political science to “defend the Palestinian cause in international forums”.
But he had to interrupt his studies before the baccalaureate and become a blacksmith “because of the difficult economic situation”, justifies the young man whose family fled the region of Acre in 1948 and were then chased out of the Palestinian camp of Tall Zaatar near of Beirut, razed during the civil war in 1976.
Sitting in a office of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, of which he is an activist, the man with the full beard says he is convinced of the existence of a “plot to starve the Palestinians in Lebanon and push them to leave” .
The camp had its heyday under the power of the PLO in the 1970s, before being the scene of a terrible massacre in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and then being surrounded by pro-Syrian militiamen in the mid-1980s.
The alarming situation of the Palestinians has further deteriorated with the severe economic crisis that has hit Lebanon since 2019. More than 80% of them live in poverty, according to Ms. Klaus.
Among the approximately 30,000 Palestinians who fled the war in Syria, some have flocked to the camp and are today the most deprived according to Unrwa, which suffers from a chronic budget deficit.
In Syria, around 400,000 Palestinian refugees are registered with the organization and have access to the labor market. In Jordan, they are about 2.3 million and enjoy the same rights as other inhabitants.
According to the official discourse, if the Lebanese authorities maintain the Palestinian refugees in this precarious situation, it is to prevent their establishment in Lebanon, so that they can return to Palestinian land one day.
“No Palestinian, wherever he lives and even if he lives well, can forget Palestine”, assures Mohammad Abdel Hafiz: “All people are born in a country, but we are born with our country in our hearts” .
03/05/2023 08:02:51 – Chatila camp (Lebanon) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
