Palestinian students

The Story of 68 Palestinian Families in Lebanon

alayham — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 15:46:56 +0000

The Story of 68 Palestinian Families in Lebanon alayham Sun, 06/08/2014 - 17:46

by FRANKLIN LAMB

Masnaa border crossing (Syria/Lebanon)
Predictions about the likely course of events in this region, including occasional ones by this observer, have a way of not panning out as expected. But one prediction I offered recently to Palestinian friends in Syria—namely that Lebanon’s “media” would fail to inform the world about an important Palestinian victory achieved in late May—has so far turned out to be accurate.
The confrontation which took place recently in a small office at Lebanon’s General Security (GS) Information Branch headquarters was for the most part civil in tone—an over-the-hill American in handcuffs refusing to answer questions from a fat guy in uniform, who kept making a racket by striking his desk with a small metal rod, this as the Yankee began a hunger strike: it has been kept quiet. No coverage in the media. And frankly, that’s fine, because arguably it wasn’t that newsworthy in any event. But the problem which had given rise to the incident surely was.
It evolved around critically important Baccalaureate exams, whose dates, between the first and seventeenth of June, were fixed months ago by the Syrian Ministry of Education. More than 364,000 students in Syria, including thousands of Palestinian refugees, are scheduled to take the exams, required for the General Secondary Certificate for 2014. Some 28,000 additional students will be taking the Technical Secondary Certificate exams. Graduating seniors in Syria must pass these exams before receiving their diplomas and enrolling in university.
The saga, briefly told, has to do with the fact that the war in Syria over the past 33 months has forced into Lebanon between 1.2 million and 2 million Syrian refugees, including approximately 80,000 Palestinians, from Yarmouk refugee camp and elsewhere, and last week’s important victory on their behalf managed to go unreported in the sectarian-poisoned, highly politicized Lebanese media.
With a population of around 3.4 million, (eleven million emigrated during and since the 1975-1990 civil war that killed more than 170,000 Lebanese) Lebanon has been impacted fairly dramatically by the refugee influx in terms of housing, jobs, water and electricity. Some of these were already in weak circumstances even before the events of March 2011, and since the war began, clashes between pro and anti-Assad forces have spilled over the border, making the situation ever more precarious. Many of those bombed or shelled out of Syria’s 10 official Palestinian refugee camps have been squeezed into sardine-canned slums that were established between 1948 and 1951 and which were originally designed as temporary, short-term housing. Residing in an area intended to house one-sixth of its current population, these refugees, 90% of whom have no jobs according to UNHCR, due to 88% of all jobs being outlawed for Palestinians in Lebanon are experiencing skyrocketing costs in healthcare, electricity and water, and they are also undergoing massive social problems. One of the latter is a marked decline in access to education, particularly among post-Baccalaureate Palestinian teenagers.
With Lebanese elections, both presidential and parliamentary, currently creating a host of political vote-harvesting opportunities, politicians have wasted no time in snatching the low-hanging fruit of six decades of refugee bashing, seizing the moment to blame refugees for all this confessional failed-state’s maladies. Vicious anti-refugee campaigns have been launched by some electoral contestants, much to the chagrin of those hoping to find haven here as well as portions of the international community, including campaigns seeking not only to expel those already here but which also press to bar those still coming in (and often arriving at the rate of thousands each day). Among the proposals being put forth are for internment camps, to be set up somewhere in a no-man’s land, which presumably would make US internment camps created for Japanese-Americans in World War II appear almost civilized by comparison.
Various measures and proposed measures, all of them inhumane and many illegal, have rained down from government ministries and party headquarters by candidates offering themselves as leaders of a state that many now claim to be a lost cause. One action, clearly illegal, taken by the present government is a proclamation by the Lebanese Interior Ministry, currently headed by Nihad al-Mashnoup, a member of the anti-Syria Future Movement.
Al-Mashnoup arbitrarily issued an order banning refugees who journey to Syria to vote or take Baccalaureates—or to check on family members or see what’s left of their homes—from regaining entry to Lebanon. The decision was put into effect on June 1, the first day of the BACC exams. It was issued just a few days after thousands of Syrians flocked to their country’s embassy in Beirut to vote in the recent election. In response, letters of protest were sent by both the Syrian and Palestinian embassies, with Syrian Ambassador Ali Abdul-Karim branding the action a “retaliatory measure” aimed at the Assad government for purpose of impeding the vote process.
“It goes against the simplest rules of human rights as it contravenes the work of the International Commission on Human Rights, as international assistance is intended to reach the Syrians at home as well as those abroad,” Ambassador Ali declared.
Others argued that al-Mashnoup’s motive was obvious, and that the clumsily-pushed plan would actually increase refugee support for the Syrian regime. Omran Zoubi, the articulate Syrian Minister of Information, claimed that the decision would affect about 500,000 Syrians, while Human Rights Watch pointed out, accurately, that the capricious restriction would be a fundamental violation of international law.
Lebanon is tightening restrictions for Palestinians fleeing there from Syria after the Lebanese interior ministry declared that improving conditions justify a return to pre-war entry regulations. “As the situation in Syria is improving, especially in Yarmouk, the exceptional circumstances cited as their reason for entry into Lebanon are no longer relevant,” a source from the Interior Ministry told some media outlets in Beirut a couple of weeks ago. “The red alert has been switched to green” he enthused.
This claim is patently false and it is reveals deep ignorance of what is going on in Yarmouk—as well as unattractive malevolence. 283 refugees have died inside Yarmouk just from starvation and two more died due to the camp siege last week despite a few aid parcels entering. As often as not, militia inside Yarmouk follow those who are handed a food parcel and rob them of it at gunpoint. And sell them at exorbitant prices which most Palestinians in Yarmouk do not have. Lebanon’s government errs with its claim. In point of fact, “the exceptional circumstances cited as their reason for entry” are as relevant as ever-if not more so today.
Palestinian-Syrians have become refugees twice over as a result of the Syrian war. They face greater hurdles even than Syrian nationals as they try to flee to neighboring countries with longstanding Palestinian populations of their own that governments do not want to see grow. Some 70,000 Palestinian-Syrians are in Lebanon, on top of a pre-war UNWRA registered Palestinian population of 455,000 many of whom have fled Lebanon due to its ‘cold war’ against this population which be the hour that some in the PLO leadership in late July of 1982, while trapped under the Israeli siege, seriously erred and bought into Reagan-Habib fake promises of protection for the camps in Lebanon and recognition of a State of Palestine within 6 months.
“How can Lebanon turn its back on desperate people who have lost their homes, relatives and livelihoods and are running for their lives from a war zone?” asked HRW Middle East Director Joe Stark. “It is unconscionable and illegal that Lebanon (would) push them back to a place where their safety and very lives could be in danger.”
The reason HRW is right is that the international refugee protection system, based firmly on the 1951 Refugee Convention, stipulates (in Article 33) that states have a duty of non-refoulement, and the duty to grant to refugees in their territory a range of legal rights (outlined in articles 2 to 32).
While there is no obligation under international law to grant asylum to refugees, states are still bound by the principle of non-refoulement. That principle, basically stated, is that no refugee shall be returned to any country “where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” So basic and universally accepted is this premise that it is now generally considered to be part of customary international law and binding upon Lebanon, even though its government has to date not ratified the Refugee Convention. Additionally, the principle is not limited to those formally recognized as refugees, but also applies to asylum-seekers. Such persons must not be returned to any country where they would face persecution. Furthermore, the rule remains in effect until they are declared not to be refugees. Several times Lebanese officials have sought to avoid this international humanitarian obligation by arguing to local media outlets that those who have fled into Lebanon are not ‘refugees’ but rather ‘displaced persons.’ But no UN agency accepts such a bald-faced attempt at evading the non-refoulement obligations, and perhaps especially not by a country whose own citizens have so often benefited from the very same legal principle it now seeks to sidestep.
For the past year at the Masnaa border crossing between Syria and Lebanon the Lebanese government has acted in an arbitrary and illegal manner. On August 8, 2013, GS abruptly changed its entry policies for Palestinians living in Syria, and began turning away all Palestinian asylum seekers. Entire families, children, the elderly and the sick were stranded at the border, fearing to return to Syria. A Palestinian spoke with this observer at the time.
“Lebanese border guards told this observer, in the company of about a dozen Palestinian asylum seekers waiting to enter Lebanon that they had “received a call from the Lebanese General Security office telling him and his immigration colleagues managing who gets in our out of Lebanon, not to allow any more Palestinians to enter the country,” he said. Word quickly spread to Beirut and Damascus and to taxi driver who make the daily run not to pick up Palestinians or you will lose a fare.
As the saga intensified, a partial solution was eventually agreed to by GS after the UN, EU, and several human rights organizations expressed condemnation of this exhibition of inhumanity.
Likewise, concerns similarly were expressed over Lebanon’s callous new imperative in regards to Palestinians from Syria wanting to return to take the crucial Baccalaureate exams. Time was getting short as the first of June drew near and the students had to make arrangements for travel, housing, food, etc. The toughest decision for most was the risk of leaving Lebanon for Syria and possibly not being allowed back in to rejoin their families. Hurried meetings were held in Damascus by volunteers from the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign and the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-lb.com), with a few similar meetings also occurring in Lebanon.
Appeals for help from international activists and some NGO’s in Lebanon began to be offered. What the PCRC and SSSP as well as the Palestine embassy were trying to bring about was a one-time exemption, for 18 days, so Palestinian students could take the BACC in Syria and return to their families in Lebanon. To this end, Palestinian Ambassador to Lebanon Ashraf Dabbour repeatedly contacted GS, working to convince them to do the right thing by the students. Additional urgent appeals to GS were made by a few NGO’s, but usually without so much as a returned phone call.
Finally, it was in this context that an American, as noted above, ran afoul of GS, finding himself placed in handcuffs while being told he would be immediately deported. Fairly clear was it to the no account fellow, however, that GS would not follow through on its threats, and as friends of the detained, including a couple of well-known journalists from mainstream media, began making inquiries on the matter, a solution was worked out—sort of on the spot.
Even sort of amiably.
GS relented and agreed to allow Palestinian students in Lebanon a one-time 19-day visa to take their BACC exams and return to Lebanon. The handcuffs came off. Apologies. Handshakes. Smiles all around and a few kisses on foreheads by the grateful American. And there are no hard feelings. One hopes.
At that point, less than 72 hours remained before the first exam on Sunday June 1, which necessitated the next somewhat frantic project: passing word of the exemption to the more than 6,000 Palestinian students who wanted to take the exam. Many had already resigned to putting it off a year, and no doubt some dropped out completely. But as the word spread, it soon came about that 68 Palestinian students were committed to going at the last minute so to speak.
And with respect to the thousands of Syrians who wanted to return to Syria to vote but were barred, they also got a reprieve. Soon al-Manar reported that GS was issuing badges for refugees headed to Syria to vote and that the badges were for a specific duration. “That means that the Syrians in Lebanon can vote without losing their status as refugees,” the reporter said.
For its own part, the Lebanese National News Agency reported that “the Syrian border is currently witnessing a traffic jam because the Syrian refugees are heading to Syria to participate in the Presidential elections,” providing also the additional information that GS was “implementing security measures in accordance with the Syrian elections along the border to organize their entry to Syria and their return to Lebanon.”
What went unmentioned, of course, is that among those crossing the border would be 68 Palestinian students traveling to take their BACC exams—or that much of the credit for securing the exemption, and thus making the massive egress possible, rightfully goes to the Palestinian embassy.
Unperturbed, Mr.Maher Moshail, Cultural Counselor for the embassy, accompanied the students to the Masnaa crossing and waved goodbye, shouting good luck to them as they headed off to sit their BACC exams in Damascus.
Admittedly for Palestinian students and their families from Syria it was only a modest victory, but maybe it will turn out to be a watershed event along a resistance path, one that sooner rather than later leads to the obtainment of the most elementary civil rights, to work and to own a home, for Palestinians in Lebanon—the only country on the planet that bars these birthrights.
This drama demonstrates that the government of Lebanon can be encouraged; using right reason and common sense, to grant some civil rights if there are advocates willing to press them. There is so much talent, but also frustration, growing despair, and security threats in the teeming Palestinian camps here. A broad-based, internationally supported, peaceful civil rights campaign is much needed in Lebanon and long overdue.
Abed, a bright, young Palestinian student from Ain al-Hilwel, has asked this observer more than once recently, “Where are all the pro-Palestinian activists and bloggers?” He goes on to comment:
“It’s great to write countless and often repetitive articles on the Internet, and demonstrations in the west are good and very much appreciated. But if our international supporters want to make history, and achieve more for we students and our families and community, and for Lebanon’s economy, than anything since the Nakba, then help us get the right to work. Come to Lebanon. It will only require a few committed experienced organizers, and we in the camps will join this international campaign by the tens of thousands for sit-in and demonstration and (to) convince our Lebanese brothers and sisters to let us work and help to rebuild their economy.”

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Why Ain al Hilweh?

alayham — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 02:59:21 +0000

Why Ain al Hilweh? alayham Sat, 11/16/2013 - 03:59

Why Ain al Hilweh?

by FRANKLIN LAMB
A modest tempest is brewing in Lebanon among some supporters of Palestine and the US State Department over the decision by the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (SSSP), the newly founded, and American donor-funded, higher education initiative, which intends to grant an additional 150-200 tuition scholarships to Palestinian students for spring semester enrolled in Lebanon’s dozen colleges and universities.
The SSSP stipend applicant pool includes some of the more than 20,000 Palestinian refugees from the Syrian crisis, approximately 35% of whom are now sardine-canned in the Palestinian Refugee camp in Saida, Ain al Helweh. The largest and historically most violent of Lebanon’s 12 camps, Ain al Helweh’s name, which means “sweet water spring”, was chosen by UN staff after a nearby stream when the camp was established following the 1948 Nakba and its name also derives from the Emirate Ain al-Hilweh from the Ottoman period.
The thousands of recent forced arrivals, (Yarmouk camp is Damascus is now 90% percent emptied of its pre-crisis population of more than 160,000) exist sometimes almost literally on top of one another according to the camp popular committees. Most of the apartments in Ein al Helwih are currently sheltering four to six families. Camp officials estimate that before the Syrian crisis the camp population was nearly 100,000, which is nearly twice the number of refugees in Ain al Helweh that research sources such as Wilkpedia list. Today’s camp population exceeds 122,000, camped on 1,500 sq. meters and was originally built to hold 20,000.
Theoretically, it was possible for the Palestinian refugees from Syria to seek safety in any country they have borders with, not only Lebanon which grants Palestinian fewer civil rights including the elementary right to work and to own a home than any other country. Some claim that Palestinian refugees now in Lebanon could have gone to Jordan or Turkey. But recent arrivals at Ain al Hilweh have strongly deny that, saying that they had tried to enter either the Jordanian borders or the Turkish ones, but they were forbidden from entering which left them with no other option.
Because there is not enough food, shelter or clean water for the Palestinians from Yarmouk and other camps in Syria pouring into Lebanon and the camp, the desperation inside parts of Ain el Helweh render it ripe for exploitation by drug dealers, pimps, gunmen recruiters, body parts brokers and religious extremists. Not just educational assistance is needed, but repairs of the main and secondary water supply system, upgrading the main and secondary sewerage system, constructing new storm water and drainage system, updating and reinstating all roads and pathways of the south district of the camp and many other infrastructure and social problems need addressing in Ain al Helweh and in all of Lebanon’s other camps.
With a predictability that Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, the Russian physiologist would understand, the US Zionist lobby including the Weekly Standards William Kristol, the notorious Islamophobe Danial Pipes and his Campus Watch witch hunters, as well as the Washington Post’s columnist, anti-Arab Charles Krauthammer, accuse the SSSP of giving college aid to “potential Palestinian terrorists” in Lebanon.
Despite these silly defamatory rants, the US government’s problem is not that it harbors objections to helping Palestinian refugee students continue their education, or that higher education necessarily leads to terrorism. Rather Washington’s great concern, according to the media office of the US Embassy in Beirut, is the location of the Scholarship Award Event which is scheduled for late February in Ain al Hilweh camp.
Ms. Zeinab al Hajj, an indefatigable longtime activist committed to improving the lives of her countrymen in Lebanon’s squalid camps and who was born and raised in Shatila escaping death during the 1982 massacre only through a miracle, is SSSP’s Executive Director. She concedes that the US Embassy has repeatedly expressed its objection to any Americans even entering Ein el Helwe and that it has instructed the Lebanese Army which surrounds the camp, to bar them. Zeinab explains to visitors that Ain al Helweh, is nicknamed by many as the “capitol of the diaspora” to honor the camps resistance to various aggressions against Lebanon over the years but that it is also labeled by some in the local media as a “zone of unlaw” because they claim that many people wanted by the Lebanese government are believed to have taken refuge in the camp as a result of the lack of Lebanese authority. Camp officials, and some NGO’s working in Ain al Helweh, dispute this charge explaining that it’s wildly exaggerated and that in any event Lebanon is full of safe havens for fugitives.
What concerns some are about stability in Ain al Helweh are the sheer number and variety of factions and militia. A very recent survey was conducted by the SSSP and constitutes what may be the most comprehensive and definitive list published to date. The survey was completed on 11/13/13.
Among the PLO factions in Ain al Helweh are the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Liberation Front, the People’s Palestinian Party, Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, the Arab Liberation Front and the Democratic Palestinian Union (Fida). Pro-Syrian factions include, but are not limited to, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Saiqa, and Fatah Intifada.
Among the Islamic factions operating inside Ain al Helweh are the Ansar Islamic League, Mujahid Islamic Movement, Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Al Jihad al Islamic Movement, Jund al Sham, Fateh al Islam, Association of Islamic Charitable Projects, about a dozen of small al Qeada affiliated groups as well as some pro Jabat al Nusra, according to camp officials.
In addition the teeming camps hosts nearly 50 popular unions, youth and women organizations and sports teams. Ain al Helweh is divided into eight geographic security zones, some notorious, controlled by the larger and stronger groups.
Some argue that increasingly these days, five countries, influence the Lebanese army in various ways– the United States, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and to a lesser extent in some respects, Lebanon itself. Consequently US instructions to the army command are taken seriously and when an American tries to enter Ain al Hilweh “legally” they are strongly discouraged, but not currently barred, if they can first secure a “visa” from the government or a letter from the US Embassy.
No doubt the warnings of the US and EU about potential violence, kidnappings for ransom and various paybacks for US military, including drone operations in the region, as well as snipers, are well intentioned and legitimate in order to protect American citizens. The US State Department argues that some of the 30 plus militia in the camp are also opposed to higher education, especially for women, and therefore some extremists might interfere with the scholarship event.
But Manal S. who lives in Saida with family in the camp points out that SSSP has set up a committee inside the unsettled camp to prepare the event Hall and other arrangements for the spring semester scholarship award event. She explains that those arrangements include militia briefings and seeking pledges from some of the main ones that they will not to interfere with their fellow countrymen receiving tuition aid, despite some fairly bizarre Talabanic interpretations of the Holy Koran which some claim forbid female education.
Why focus spring semester on scholarships for Ain al Helweh camp?
Because Ain al Helweh has the highest school dropout rates, the highest rates of shootings and domestic violence, the highest rates of selling body parts to survive, and its future will be determined by the achievements of its young people who number more than 40 percent of Lebanon’s largest camps population. Because there is not enough food, shelter or clean water for the Palestinians from Yarmouk the desperation inside parts of Ain al Helweh render it ripe for exploitation by drug dealers, pimps, gunmen recruiters, body parts brokers and religious extremists. Of course, not just educational assistance is needed, but repairs of the main and secondary water supply system, upgrading the main and secondary sewerage system, constructing new storm water and drainage system, updating and reinstating all roads and pathways of the south district of the camp and many other infrastructure and social problems need addressing in Ain al Helweh and in all of the other camps.
According to recent UNRWA-funded study and various recent estimates, school dropout rates across Lebanon for Palestinian refugee children ten years and older average more than 40%, or ten times that of Lebanese children (CSUCS, 2007).
The SSSP, after much discussion, chose Ain al Helweh camp for spring semester scholarship because it’s where there exists, arguably the most urgent need to aid current and future college students who today are under increasing pressure in this violent and ever more confessional region to choose a Kalashnikov—over College which they cannot afford, in exchange for $ 130 a month and free cigarettes, the current ‘salary ‘in Lebanon for all manner of gunmen employed by various so-called “political parties.”
The Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program believes that it can help Ain al Helweh youngsters and send a positive message to Palestinians in Lebanon and elsewhere to resist the temptation to drop out of school and to instead, pursue higher education. SSSP seeks applications from across Lebanon and each semester brings its circuit scholarship award event to one of the 12 camps, because it believes SSSP must travel around Lebanon to the camps rather than require students to travel, sometimes with barriers for Palestinians en route, from the far North and deep South, all the way to Beirut.
The first two SSSP tuition grants events were held last April in Shatila camp and the second last month in Burj al Barajneh camp. Ms. Hajj explains that SSSP does not limits its aid to her fellow refugees who have the highest GPA’s on the Baccalaureate II exams, but rather SSSP intentionally seeks out Palestinian refugee students, as long as they passed the “Bacc” who without tuition aid may well give up on the idea of seeking higher education.
Asked by a reporter during the most recent SSSP scholarship event whether the American donor funded efforts can fix all that? “Not a chance!” answers Reem, a precocious and charming teen-age SSSP volunteer from Ain al Helweh who wants to study engineering,” but as a project of resistance and to help our society we will try to the best of our ability.”
Suha, a SSSP (sssp-lb.com) volunteer joked the other day that to a group of visiting Americans:
“We really do appreciate your US embassy’s concerns and we love the American people. And if your embassy would only grant just ten scholarships for an average semester tuition cost of $1,700 per student, from our high number of applicants—we promise to move our event to whichever camp they prefer.”
___________________________________________
About the Author
Franklin Lamb volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (SSSP) in Shatila Camp (www.sssp-lb.com) and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

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Are Palestinian Students in Lebanon Being Pressured to Choose Kalashnikovs Over College?

alayham — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 00:27:11 +0000

Are Palestinian Students in Lebanon Being Pressured to Choose Kalashnikovs Over College? alayham Sat, 07/20/2013 - 02:27

Are Palestinian Students in Lebanon Being Pressured to Choose Kalashnikovs Over College?
Outside Ein el Helwe Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon, July 2013. Image courtesy Salem-News.com

by Franklin Lamb
Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian Camp.
They are 67 new families, or about 400 Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria, residing in 60 recently erected tents set up as an emergency ‘gathering’ near the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp adjacent to the city of Sidon in southern Lebanon. In all, there are approximately 75,000 thousand Palestinians in Lebanon who have fled from Syria over the past 28 months.
Additional Palestinians arrive every week and sometimes meet former neighbors from Yarmouk and other Syrian Palestinian camps at the Masnaa Lebanon-Syria border crossing. The new arrivals are often grimaced to happen upon their countrymen who are returning to take their chances facing death in Syria including dodging the snipers and bombings targeting Yarmouk and elsewhere. The reasons the returnees give for returning to Syria focus on the appalling humanitarian conditions in Lebanon for Palestinians as well as the nearly 780,000 other refugees here from Syria.
Palestinians forced into Lebanon from Syria soon learn, if they were not aware previously, that all Palestinians refugees in Lebanon are barred by law from the most elementary civil rights to work and to own a home. More than 50 professions open to Palestinians in Syria and in every other country, including occupied Palestine, are forbidden here. Two examples of jobs Palestinians can do and are doing in Lebanon when they arrive from Syria include scavenging through the rotting filth at Saida Garbage Mountain and other Lebanese government public garbage dumps to find something worth a few Lebanese Lira (LL) to help their loved ones survive. No, nearly impossible to secure work permit, is even required so they need not fear arrest by the Lebanese authorities who irregularly round up Palestinian violators of this country’s no work for Palestinian refugees ban.
The same, “no work permit required” reality is true of another profession which critics accuse the “Government” of Lebanon and its competing politicians of approving instead of allowing even one currently banned legitimate job to those whose lives are at risk and who are desperately in need of livelihood.
That profession which is open to every Palestinian today in Lebanon willing to consider it, is ‘hired gun’.
While both the major political grouping in Lebanon will deny they do it but will accuse the other, the fact of the matter is that both continue to discreetly recruit Palestinians to fight their personal battles on the cheap. It is unfortunately the case that some Palestinians, sweltering in the squalid, fetid camps in Lebanon, discriminated against in public institutions of higher learning, and barred from internationally mandated elementary civil rights, are seeking jobs as militiamen. This against the admonitions and sage counsel of the older generation of PLO fighters, now mainly retired, that the Syrian civil war is not theirs and that Palestinian involvement will not advance Return to Palestine and reclaiming stolen homes and land, by one minute or by one inch.
The choice for many Palestinian young men in Lebanon has come down to guns or education. By force of Lebanese law and under threat of prison for violators, Palestinians are denied the elementary civil rights to work in more than 50 professions and are barred by a 2001 racist law from them or their families, more than six decades living as refugees in Lebanon, from even owning a home. Among Palestinian youth, unemployment rates hover around 70%, while refugee students are also discriminated against in admission to Lebanese state institutions of higher education, including the relatively low-tuition fees at Lebanese University. This makes it difficult for young Palestinians in Lebanon to pursue higher education after graduating from UNWRA schools and passing the Baccalaureate II exam. Being barred from most jobs, it is very difficult to come up with even modest sums for tuition payments.
Against this backdrop of flagrant state sponsored discrimination, if one were to offer un-employed young camp resident, say $ 200 per month, an AK-47 with plenty of ammo, and free cigarettes, the odds are good that you just might have yourself a militiaman. Those journalists and observers who spent much of the summer of 2011 in Libya saw a similar phenomenon and now it’s also the case in Syria. In Lebanon, it is resurgent from the 1975-90 civil war days. The gun for hire resource is being exploited across the political spectrum here among many of the same confessions and political parties that ignited this country’s massively destructive civil war more than three decades ago.
Today, some Palestinians are being paid to fight for certain factions whether from the North of Lebanon at Tripoli and Akkar, to Beirut and various contentious areas such as Tariq al-Jdideh, Sabra, Cola, and down south in Saida during recent clashes that saw 16 Lebanese army killed and twice that number from the supporters of Salafist activist Ahmad Asir. Despite denials from some sources, there were a few Palestinians who fought for Asir and some Palestinians joined other militia including the Hezbollah organized “Resistance Brigades’ and the Lebanese army in fighting against Asir’s forces. An investigation in supposedly underway of the army’s conduct and the involvement of political parties from both the March 14 anti-Assad sects and elements of the March 8th pro-Assad groups regarding recruitment of Palestinian youngsters.
President Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly warned Palestinians in Lebanon during his 72 hour visit to Lebanon last week to reject these offers and not to be drawn into the Syrian conflict despite the ‘market place maneuverings’ going on here from various armed confessions. What he meant is that as most of the Lebanese sects are frantically arming and seeking gunmen and weapons, that Palestinian s must refuse to be exploited once again and that they must reject any involvement in a military conflict that contravenes their communities wishes and their national interest. He lectured a gathering of PLO factions at a Palestine Embassy event that this terrible error was the case during the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil wars. For that involvement, Palestinians in Lebanon continue to pay a very heavy price from certain factions here that rather see Lebanon’s economy continue to decline than allow Palestinians to work and help build the local economy as they have done in countless other countries which granted them the right to work and the opportunity to invest in the economy with their technical competence and business skills.
As one Palestinian academic pointed out last week to this observer, “While President Abbas assured Lebanese politicians that Palestinian factions did not want to join the Syrian civil war, he also chastised Lebanon’s government in private for not pressuring various factions, most with representatives in Parliament, to stop recruiting and enticing the hapless, desperate for work refugees, forced into Lebanon against their will.
PA President Abbas also repeated the PLO’s willingness to turn the refugee camps weapons over to the government. He did this with a straight face but surely he knows well that despite the regular scapegoating of Palestinians refugees in Lebanon and the danger they are said by some to pose because some have access to light arms, as everyone in Lebanon does, the truth of the matter is that the Lebanese political groups, even the most open about their hatred of Palestinians in Lebanon, do not want the state to collect or receive as gifts the arms in the Palestinian camps and gatherings, however many there they in fact are. The reason is that if the Palestinians had no weapons at all in the camp, it would make it awkward for some politicians to use the fear of a return to the early 1970’s and the potential danger of a Palestinian uprising for sects political advantage. Truth told, there is no realistic fear, unless provoked, from Palestinians arms. They are exaggerated as is the number of salafist factions inside camps. Yet without the right to work, some Palestinians will doubtless be seduced into becoming hired guns for scarce cash to feed their families.

Hiring young men as gunmen in Lebanon is also impliedly condoned by silence on this problem from various polarized and politicized religious leaders. Some of Lebanon’s religious personalities, too often, wearing pious faces and donning prelatical ‘Pope-wannabe’, if sometimes comical, outfits, and often sporting fingers ringed with gold and precious jewels, intone their gospels according to St. Mark, or his equivalents, about human dignity and being our brother’s keeper, and often referencing “ our blood-veins support for Palestine and the Right of Return.” While simultaneously standing in Janus-faced opposition to the elementary internationally mandated right to work for Palestinians in Lebanon.
When a Palestinian is arrested for carrying a weapon, it’s often front-page news but also usually exaggerated or later shown to be inaccurate. What is more surprising is that more Palestinians are not in the streets, motivated by the Arab Spring and Islamic Awakening, demanding the civil right to work. Yet signs are starting to appear of a pending and overdue intifada in Lebanon demanding this universally recognized right of every refugee to be able to seek work to sustain oneself and family.
Rumors abound these tense days in many part of Lebanon, as if to say, “I told you didn’t I? The Palestinians are the source of most of Lebanon’s problems!” (or the Zionists, or the Saudis, EU, Iranians, Syrians, other Lebanese sects or the Americans, or just about anyone except, this countries deeply destructive confessional system and the Lebanese who profit from this, to date, failed state. Too many Lebanese politicians reject granting rights to Palestinian refugees while they seek to gain personal, regional and international benefits from playing the “Palestinian card”. Meanwhile, dangerous temperature and pressure levels are building in the huge Presto cookers that are Lebanon’s camps.
On a brighter note, arriving with a late news item of 7/18/13, are the just released results of the General Science (SG) and Life Science (SV) secondary school official exam results known as the Baccalaureate II exam results. Preliminary analysis suggests that despite all their hardships, Palestinian and Syrian refugees have done well on the required exams.
One Palestinian mother from Yarmouk camp in Damascus, now among the 700 Palestinian refugee families temporarily here from Syria, and squeezed into the already overflowing Shatila camp explained to this observer as she proudly displayed this week’s announcement of her children’s academic success. She beamed that even with little electricity in her family hovel, polluted drinking water, no fresh air and not much food this past year, her daughter’s and son’s success in passing ‘the BACC II” made her forget her family’s misery.
So it is that the doors are cracked open for higher education, if Palestinian refugees in Lebanon can come up with tuition, sometimes fairly modest by western standards but beyond the means of a majority of camp families. The good news that there will be places in Lebanon’s institutions of higher learning this fall semester, assuming that these youngsters, desperate to be allowed to work at the same jobs that every other foreigner in granted on arriving to Lebanon, do not heed the sirens calls of various sects here, singing seductive songs of quick cash in exchange for carrying a gun.
On April 19, 2013 at the Shatila Camp Youth Center, exactly 30 years to the week following the death of American journalist, Janet Lee Stevens here in Beirut, and recalling times during the 1982 Israeli aggression that rained American bombs of various types down on the civilian population, and still hearing Janet’s voice telling young Palestinian defenders, during the 75-day Zionist siege, “ Once the fighting ends you must, every one of you, return to school, whether to study quantum physics or literature or whatever interests you. Higher education is what will hasten your return to Palestine. Education is your greatest resource and your most potent weapon.”

Shatila Camp Scholarship award event, April 2013. Image courtesy Salem-News.com

Speaking at the Shatila Scholarship Award event, one American, paying tribute to Janet as a mediator and advocate for Palestine, and addressing the tuition grant recipients, sought to encourage these future Palestinian leaders:
“An education is forever and its purpose is to enjoy a more productive lifetime while seeking to fulfill all of what each of us is capable as we give back to our respective communities. Staying in school here in Lebanon where we are all guests, just for the time being, and pursuing knowledge and practical skills is a quintessential and noble act and commitment of Resistance against oppression and occupation – anywhere.   Education cannot be ethnically cleansed, stolen, tortured, jailed, uprooted, bulldozed, massacred, murdered, bombed or burned down. Rather, staying in school and pursuing ones dream is what your cherished for-bearers, who were forced from their homes and lands into Lebanon and trekked from Palestine- approximately 130,000- in the summer and fall of 1948, would want for you, and expect of you.
Education is a Saladinian Resistance toward liberating, six decades after the Nakba, those still under occupation in Palestine. And to help achieve for refugees in the diaspora, their inalienable full Right of Return.”
When and how do we put an end to this outrage which is an urgent humanitarian imperative shared by every one of us?
We end it immediately.
We do it by Lebanon’s parliament, taking 90 minutes of its time, which is all that would be required, and grant these youngsters the most elementary civil right to work which will also enable them to pursue their dreams of higher education.
And by international support.
This can be facilitated by international pressure. One telephone call from Washington, Riyadh, or Tehran, to local political allies, can get the job done in just over an hour without further procrastination.
If not, to add to its other problems, Lebanon may face a civil right intifada– ignited by continued repression.
In the words of the angelic Miss Hiba of Ein el Hilweh camp, now 19 years old and three years after her defiant declaration in 2010 to those who sneered at her that she should get married at age 16, and with her beauty, could demand a handsome dowry for her impoverished family, and forget about college: “There is no other choice than success with the civil rights goal of every Palestinian in Lebanon to seek a job and to pursue education as we peacefully intensify our struggle to Return to our stolen and still occupied country, Palestine. “
Today, Hiba continues the good fight as she completes next year, her degree in engineering. She insists she will need this knowledge when she returns to her family’s occupied home near Safed.
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About the Author
Franklin Lamb , a former Assistant Counsel of the US House Judiciary Committee at the US Congress and Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil, and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, and is doing research in Lebanon.. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon. He can be reached at: fplamb@gmail.com He is a regular contributor to Intifada Palestine.

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