by Fady Noun

Forty years after the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camp, the unresolved emergency has worsened over time with the war in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of children deprived of the right to education. International aid conditional on their remaining in Lebanon, compromising the fragile ethnic and confessional balance. 

Beirut (AsiaNews) - Every year at this time, the international press feels obliged to remind us of one of the most cowardly and shameful episodes of the Lebanese war, that of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila (16-18 September 1982), in the midst of the Israeli invasion.

Arriving in Beirut as part of the 'Peace in Galilee' operation, Ariel Sharon's army, after expelling the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) under international supervision, surrounded the two camps while groups of militiamen - mostly Christians - penetrated and eliminated valuable men still inside, then turned against the civilian population. Between 800 and 2,000 people lost their lives in the massacre.

Two days earlier, another massacre had taken place in Achrafieh, in the heart of Christian Beirut, costing the lives of 33 people including Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel, who had just been re-elected three weeks earlier.

Far from trying to justify one massacre with another, this tragedy underlines the atrocity of a war underway since 1975 to free Lebanon from the burden of a refugee population driven from its land following the partition of Palestine (UN Resolution 181, 29 November 1947), which history had transformed into a people of Fedayyìn. A people driven to believe, by a gust of political madness, that Lebanon could serve as a substitute for Palestine, or as a springboard to regain a lost homeland.

The encirclement of West Beirut by the Israeli army and the mediation of US emissary Philip Habib put an end to the presence of Yasser Arafat and the PLO in the Lebanese capital. The Palestinian people, who arrived in waves after 1949, once again became 'refugees'. And this is how they remain, at least in Lebanon.

Weighed down by this burden, and living in permanent fear of a naturalisation of the Palestinians that would be imposed on them, the Lebanese were forced - less than 30 years later - to welcome another flow of refugees, this time Syrians, driven out of their country following a peaceful intifada that later degenerated into violence (2011).

Between 1947 and 2011, two large population flows thus destabilised a tiny country of 10,452 km2. And seriously endangered its young independence (achieved in 1943), based on a delicate confessional balance between the Christian and Muslim components of its population.

Two ongoing crises 

These two great crises have continued over time, both for the host country and for the host populations, and only a historical miracle can save Lebanon from the drama it is currently experiencing.

The Palestinians live in misery. They represent the largest stateless population in the world (between 200 and 400 thousand people, according to uncertain and changing estimates); its members are deprived of civil rights, with limited access to the occupation, in a nation that is only a few hundred kilometres from a homeland that has become inaccessible.

The people many of whom are crammed into unhealthy camps, devoid of hope and where, in an endless cycle, one refugee gives birth to another, have been faced with a gradual decline in or  arbitrary restrictions on international aid (UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East deprived of funds by President Donald Trump), in order to force Lebanon to naturalise them, effectively sanctioning as a fait accompli the expulsion from their homeland. 

A more or less similar fate seems to be in store for the Syrian civilian population, which has poured into Lebanon since 2011. Estimated today at between one and 1.5 million, this population - part of which has begun to be repatriated on the initiative of the Lebanese authorities - seems headed for naturalisation, to the detriment of the government's efforts.

As weakened and corrupt as it is, the executive indeed rejects this scenario and tries hard to encourage Syrians to return to their country in the knowledge that Syria, in 2022, has regained much of its stability.

However, it should be noted that the international financial community, led by the United States, remains hostile to repatriation policies while refusing to rebuild a war-torn country unless it has first obtained political and economic concessions from the regime [in Damascus]. Which is not easy, also putting the factor of the Russian presence in Syria on the table.

Moreover, there is something suspicious in the fact that the aid granted by international bodies is conditional on their [the refugees'] presence in Lebanon, and would end up being suspended on the spot if they returned to their homes and lands.

A condescending tone

In this context the an NGO, in this case Human Rights Watch (Hrw), has condescendingly dictated to the Lebanese state its tasks, in a nation where the currency has lost 95 per cent of its purchasing power and where teachers do not have the minimum to feed themselves decently and to get around: "The Ministry of Education should clearly and publicly announce that children [Syrians, ed] can enrol in Lebanese schools despite not possessing a residence permit, without any birth certificate and without any documents issued by the Syrian state, and that they do not need proof of previous schooling, whether it is official and recognised attendance at an institution or equivalent informal lessons. Many Syrian children cannot obtain these documents, and no blame can be attached to them'.

A 2021 UN study states that 'Lebanon receives 660,000 Syrian refugee children of school age [there are about 40,000 births each year, ed], but 30 per cent of them - or about 200,000 children - have never attended school'. Moreover, 'nearly 60 per cent have not gone to school in recent years [...] and at least 90 per cent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon now live below the extreme poverty line, up from 55 per cent in 2019'. 

Faced with this emergency, Lebanon has tried by all means to communicate to the international community that the burden of the presence of Syrian refugees has now become "unbearable". And that there is no choice but to "do everything to repatriate them".

In conclusion, we can say that the civil war unleashed in 1975 by the Palestinian presence was fuelled by a misunderstanding and lack of dialogue between Lebanese, elements around which Damascus has skilfully manoeuvred. Today, however, the Syrian presence in Lebanon is viewed with suspicion by many Lebanese, who consider it a simple operation aimed at relocating a people, and one that is destined to change Lebanese identity forever. Caught in the global geopolitical turmoil, the Land of Cedars is therefore desperately trying to keep its head above water and stay afloat.