The siege of Nahr Al-Bared and the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

• Author: Abboud, Samer
• Position: Company overview

INTRODUCTION

THE LEBANESE ARMY'S SIEGE OF THE Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, home to over 31,000 Palestinian refugees, initiated a second experience of displacement and exile within the community. Perhaps as troublesome as the displacement and loss of economic livelihood wrought on the Palestinian inhabitants of the camp was the inability of the Palestinian leadership to prevent such a rapid deterioration in the security of the camp. While conventional wisdom may blame Fatah al-Islam solely for the crisis, the Palestinian leadership and the Lebanese state are equally responsible for failing to ensure the security and safety of the Palestinian refugees. Public statements by the Palestinian leadership were initially supportive of the army's bombardment of the camp. Meanwhile, the Lebanese political establishment made very little effort to conceal its distrust of the refugees, essentially holding them responsible for the presence of Fatah al-Islam. With the Palestinian leadership providing cover, and the Lebanese political establishment in full support of the military's posturing around the camp, the initial conflict in Nahr al-Bared was to have inevitably disastrous effects on the Palestinian refugees who were left unprotected from the army's siege.

This article examines the factors that brought about this tragedy and begins to assess the long-term impact on Palestinian communities in Lebanon. It aims to critically engage with reconstruction plans and argue that these plans neglect the structural causes of violence towards Palestinians. Responses to the siege have tended to focus narrowly on the physical reconstruction of the Nahr al-Bared camp and its integration into the neoliberal economic landscape of Lebanon. However, neoliberal visions of the new camp's flourishing economy fail to include any discussion of a renewed political relationship between the Lebanese government and Palestinian leadership, a severe deficiency that points to the Palestinian's continued economic marginalization and a sustained denial of their civil rights in post-siege Lebanon.

Some prefatory notes on structure will prove helpful. First, the status of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will be discussed to highlight their exclusion from the international refugee protection regimes and the Lebanese domestic rights framework. This is followed by a rather descriptive discussion of the Nahr al-Bared camp and the Lebanese army's siege in the summer of 2007. Emphasis will be placed on the collapse of security within the camps and the failed attempts by the Palestinian leadership to protect the Palestinians. Third, the socio-economic impact of the siege on Palestinians will be evaluated based on preliminary data detailing housing and infrastructural damage, as well as labor outcomes. This will be followed by a discussion of the Master Plan, a conceived of reconstruction plan to rebuild the Nahr al-Bared camp. Finally, the paper will conclude with a critique of the proposed plan, arguing that unless Palestinians are integrated into the Lebanese rights framework they will continue to suffer from insecurity in Lebanon and remain vulnerable to physical attacks and further displacement.

THE STATUS OF PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN LEBANON

This section focuses on the legal status of Palestinian refugees both in international and Lebanese domestic law. There exists a legal lacuna (Akram 2002) that sets Palestinian refugees apart from other refugees, a gap that is caused by Palestinian exclusion from the rights of refugees as guaranteed by the 1951 Refugee Convention and the international regime for refugee protection. According to Akram (2002) the Refugee Convention attempted to frame the issue of refugees and state-less persons as an international, rather than a domestic or regional, problem.

As such, it sought to guarantee protections and rights for refugees through ensuring that host states would grant refugees a number of rights, including freedom of religion, property rights, freedom from undue restrictions on unemployment, and rights to education and health. It also made provisions for more permanent forms of relief such as residence and citizenship. The instruments of the international regime were meant to guarantee the fundamental rights of refugees and state-less persons in host countries.

However, Palestinian refugees do not fall under this international regime. Their rights are instead determined by a separate regime that governs the legal status of Palestinian refugees. Composed of two special UN agencies The United Nations Conciliation Commission on Palestine (UNCCP) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) this regime is based on special principles drawn from a number of UN resolutions focusing solely on Palestinians. Since Palestinian refugees are provided services by UNRWA, provisions in the United Nations Commission for Human Rights (UNHCR) that deny rights to people receiving assistance from other UN organs mean that the UNHCR has no protection mandate over Palestinian refugees. This has also been interpreted to mean that Palestinians are excluded from the international regime on refugee protection, including the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Refugee Protocol. Although Akram (2002) has demonstrated that this was not the intention of the drafters, Palestinians nevertheless are subject to a special regime of protection and rights, in part because the international community and the Arab states had agreed that the Palestinian refugee crisis demanded special measures.

Emerging from this special regime was the interventionist role of the UNCCP which focused on political negotiations with Israel. By 1951 the UNCCPs role was effectively terminated by General Assembly motions stripping it of its negotiating power, a move that relegated the organ to information gathering regarding refugee property and compensation, a role it maintains today. This left UNRWA as the major organ dealing with Palestinians. Since UNRWA was mandated to provide services, and the UNCCP to provide protection, not four years after the nakba did Palestinian refugees lose all rights and claims to host country rights and protection under international law.

Although the Palestinians were supposed to enjoy special protection under international law, when that regime collapsed it created a 'protection gap'. The most serious implication of the protection gap is that Palestinians in Arab states are granted very few benefits by way of rights; whatever rights they do enjoy are by way of privilege (Akram 2002: 44). Since none of the Arab states in which Palestinians reside are signatories to the Refugee Convention they can deny Palestinians all rights protected under the regime, including the right to education, employment, services and property. The rights and protection of Palestinians remain subject to the will of the Arab states. The implications of the protection gap are substantial, and mean that the Palestinians remain deprived of any basic guarantee of rights and protection, as well as any possibility for international intervention in the case of violence as guaranteed by the international refugee regime. The absence of a regime to guarantee Palestinian rights and protect them from violence has been most evident in Lebanon where Palestinian communities remain subject to the aggression of Lebanese militias, such as through the Civil War (1975-1990), or the Lebanese army, most notably during the summer of 2007 with the siege of Nahr al-Bared.

Compounding the protection gap is the Lebanese state's refusal to apply the League of Arab States Protocol (1965) that called for Arab host states to grant Palestinian refugees the same rights as their citizens (Schulz 2003: 53). The Lebanese political establishment and general population remain fiercely opposed to integration or tawteen. Any suggestion that the Palestinians should be granted rights in Lebanon is immediately rejected on the grounds that it represents a step towards integration. Indeed, Sayigh (2001: 100) has even suggested that opposition to tawteen is the glue that holds the Lebanese political system together. In Lebanon's delicate sectarian mosaic any talk of Palestinian integration is rejected on the grounds that it would tilt the sectarian balance in favour of Sunni Muslims. For Lebanon's political establishment--Christian and Muslim--the Palestinians represent a threat to the national identity and sovereignty of Lebanon. It is precisely this perception of Palestinians subjects them to constant penetration and siege (or at least the threat of siege) by the Lebanese authorities who have framed the Palestinians as the gravest threat to Lebanese security (Suleiman 1999: 72).

THE NAHR AL-BARED REFUGEE CAMP

There were over 31,000 Palestinian refugees in the Nahr al-Bared camp, which was established in 1949. Most of the camp's inhabitants come from Galilee villages: Safad, Saffouri, Saasaa, Loubieh, Khalssa and Safsaf. Since the camps grew spontaneously rather than in accordance with UN refugee plans the various forms of social relations and organizations that existed in Palestine persisted in the camps. Thus, while the residents of Nahr al-Bared had lost their villages, land and homes to Israeli occupation, socially speaking they remained interconnected through social and familial linkages. Prior to the siege Nahr al-Bared was the second largest refugee camp in Lebanon. An adjacent camp, referred to as the new camp, had sprung up in recent years that were home to more affluent Palestinian families. Although exact figures are unavailable, it is believed that many poorer Lebanese and Syrians had also lived in the camps. This was particularly true in the 1970s as there was movement into the camps by various non-Palestinians. Not surprisingly, overcrowding and poor infrastructure characterized the living conditions of the camp. Overcrowding has been a persistent problem in the...