| Old fears haunt Lebanon
camps
By Sun's Foreign Desk
Monday, March 28, 2005
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•A refugee camp
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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Muhammad sips his coffee, takes a few staccato puffs on his
cigarette and leans forward furtively as if to share some
important secret.
He has a nervous energy - he is a nervous guy.
As a teenager back in 1982, Mohammed saw his family killed
in the notorious Sabra and Shatila massacre, when Lebanese
Christian Phalangists attacked Palestinian refugees.
Twenty three years later, he is still living in the same camp.
"I'm frightened, frightened to death. If we are disarmed,
who's going to take care of us?," he asks.
"We were disarmed once before, and look what happened!"
Muhammad's anxiety has been aroused, or rather re-awakened,
by the political developments now playing out on the streets
of Beirut.
Up to half a million demonstrators at a time have come out
calling for Syria to pull out of Lebanon in line with UN Security
Council Resolution 1559.
The resolution also demands the disbanding of Lebanon's armed
militias, which focuses attention on the powerful pro-Syrian
Shia group, Hezbollah.
Survivors
Lebanon, those in favour of resolution 1559 argue, needs to
become a normal country, not living under foreign occupation,
and without armed groups operating as a state within a state.
But that raises the question of what should happen to its
Palestinian population, plenty of whom are heavily armed.
There are several hundred thousand Palestinians in Lebanon.
They are the survivors and descendants of those who fled Israel
at its creation in 1948, and again after the 1967 war.
Today, they live in conditions which UN officials will tell
you are appalling, even by the grim standards of the refugee
diaspora.
Their camps often lack basic amenities, while their inhabitants
are largely blocked from making a decent living in the host
country.
At the Ein al-Hilweh camp, armed Palestinian militias patrol
their respective micro-territories, sometimes engaging in
internecine conflict in a microcosm of the Palestinian world.
Shootings are common, but when somebody is killed, the Lebanese
authorities do not intervene. Indeed, they rarely enter the
camp at all.
List of enemies
The Christian politician Dory Chamoun speaks for many Lebanese
when he denounces this state of affairs.
"It's about making Lebanon a proper democratic republic
where laws are respected and where the only weapons that are
authorised are in the hands of the police and the army,"
he says.
"I don't see any reason whatsoever for the Palestinians
to have arms."
But plenty of Palestinians do.
They collected an impressive list of enemies during the 1975-1990
Lebanese civil war - Phalangists, the Israelis, the Shia Muslim
Amal militia.
Although the Lebanese Civil War ended 15 years ago, some smaller
Christian militia have units which remain armed and prepared
for action.
One commander recently showed off his collection of guns to
Western journalists.
He insisted his men would never use them on other Lebanese
people because he did not want to go back to civil war.
But if the Palestinians ever seemed to pose a threat, he said,
well that was a different matter.
Wild rumours
And it is not just jumpy militiamen in the hills who believe
in such a threat.
In the fashionable bars of central Beirut, you hear people
once again describing the Palestinians as a potential enemy
living in their midst.
Everyone is waiting to see if Syria attempts to put down the
demonstrations, and one theory has it that they will get the
Palestinians to do their dirty work for them.
It is a fanciful suggestion. Palestinians have little love
for Syria, which turned on them during the Civil War. And
there is also base self-interest at work.
If Syrian troops pull out, many Syrian labourers will leave
too, vacating their jobs, perhaps for Palestinians to fill.
But this is a situation of suspicion and counter-suspicion.
And although many Lebanese retain a deep sympathy for the
Palestinians and their cause, the more sectarian-minded see
them as mortal foes.
Distrust
Back in Shatila, Muhammad is weighing up his chances.
He says he does not trust the Lebanese government, or even
his own leaders right now.
Like many Palestinians in Lebanon, he suspects that Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas might cut a deal with Israel,
one that sorts out the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, but
pays only lip service to the refugees' claim of a right to
return to their homeland.
In this state of heightened collective anxiety, he is not
in a mood to think about laying down guns.
"The strategy has always been to erase the Palestinians
from the map of Lebanon," he argues.
"Amal killed 1,000 civilians because we were defenceless.
And the friend of today can easily become the enemy of tomorrow.
History repeats itself."
Muhammad insists his main goal in life is to go back to Palestine,
the land his parents fled.
But right now, he just wants to be anywhere but where he is.
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