[News] Petition For Palestinian Civil Rights in Lebanon

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Franklin Lamb – Why We Petition For Palestinian Civil Rights in Lebanon

By 
<http://palestinethinktank.com/author/guest-post/>Guest 
Post • Feb 1st, 2010 at 19:52
http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/02/01/franklin-lamb-why-we-petition-for-palestinian-civil-rights-in-lebanon/

“We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions 
to participate in the process of change or 
resistance. Small acts, when multiplied by many 
people, can transform the world”

“If we remember those times and places–and there 
are so many–where people have behaved 
magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, 
and at least the possibility of sending this 
spinning top of a world in a different direction. 
And if we do act, in however small a way, we 
don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. 
The future is an infinite succession of presents, 
and to live now as we think human beings should 
live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Professor Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

  Hundreds of people from around the World have 
signed an Online Petition 
<http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html>http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html 
in the opening days of an international effort to 
achieve basic Civil Rights for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.

We Petition because we believe that alongside 
Statehood, and the exigency of lifting the 
criminal siege of Gaza, immediately granting the 
right to work and the right to purchase a home to 
Palestinians in Lebanon, after 62 years of 
indignity and degradation, is a fundamental 
imperative of basic morality and justice.

We Petition because as British journalist Robert 
Fisk wrote in the UK Independent on January 16, 
2010 after a camp visit: “ The Sabra and Shatila 
Palestinian Refugee Camps are repulsive, obscene, 
outrageous, filthy, stinking slums and a place of 
such squalor that the gorge rises that human 
beings even live there.” The reason why Lebanon’s 
12 Palestinian Refugee camps are the worst of the 
58 camps in the Middle East is due primarily to 
the fact that unlike occupied Palestine, Jordan, 
and Syria, Palestinians in Lebanon do not possess the most basic civil rights

We Petition because many of us are from countries 
that continue to aid and abet this degradation, 
for which like each of our fellow citizens we 
bare personal responsibility and feel shame, as 
we contemplate the founding principles of our 
nations that we cherish being sullied by silence and inaction.

We Petition because Lebanon’s Palestinian 
refugees are today, as has been the case for 62 
years, systematically deprived of basic rights 
guaranteed by the United Nations Charter, the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and because 
the Palestinian refugees are the only refugee 
population in the world excluded from the 
international protection accorded by the United 
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 
Statute and the Refugee Convention. At the end of 
2008, at least 7.1 million Palestinians, 
representing 67 percent of the entire Palestinian 
population (10.6 million) worldwide were 
displaced persons. Among them are 6.6 million 
refugees and 427,000 IDPs. This makes Palestinian 
refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) 
the largest and longest-standing case of displaced persons in the world today.

We Petition because the Lebanese government, in 
particular, as well as the broader international 
community, have the obligation to respect and 
ensure the full range of civil, political, 
economic, social and cultural rights of 
Palestinians living in Lebanon, without 
discrimination. These rights include the rights 
to work, to education, to the highest attainable 
standard of health, to adequate housing and an adequate standard of living.

We Petition because we want to twin with every 
Palestinian Refugee in Lebanon and to pay 
heartfelt condolences to the families of every 
Lebanese who died during the several aggressions 
launched against them. Each Petition signature 
links with our cherished friend, Badriah Haij of 
Shatila Refugee Camp, now ill and preparing for 
death and to meet the Prophets. Sixty two years 
ago she walked for two days into Lebanon at Maron 
al Ras from her village of Al Amoka near Safad, 
Palestine. Badriah’s fervent death wish, and that 
of her daughter Zeinab and her siblings, is to 
have someone bring a handful of dirt from her 
family homestead for her children to sprinkle 
into her casket in Lebanon until, as Badriah 
believes, her remains will be returned to 
Palestine and she can rest in peace. Each 
signature links with Master Ali Hamise a young 
man of 11 years old who happened upon a 
delegation of visiting Europeans and Americans 
recently and they engaged the ill glad youngster 
near the garbage pile on Rue Sabra. Ali stunned 
the visitors with his knowledge of Palestine as 
he recited much history and the names of nearly 
150 destroyed villages in occupied Palestine that 
he insisted must be rebuilt “so people can go 
home.” “How could da kinder know all that?” a crusty German gentleman asked.

And each signature links in solidarity with more 
than 7 million Palestinians in the Diaspora, many 
forced to disperse to survive and whose Right of 
Return is inerasably engraved in international law.

We Petition because International law requires 
that civil, political, economic, social and 
cultural rights must be accorded the Palestinian 
Refugees in Lebanon without discrimination. 
Lebanon, like all Countries, must ensure that any 
discrimination against her hosted Palestinian 
Refugees is eliminated. The discretion given to 
countries in the extent to which they must ensure 
economic rights for Refugees does not justify 
restricting access to the right to work on the 
basis of preserving the right to return, as some 
in Lebanon have argued. Lebanon is obliged not to 
interpret the distinction between nationals and 
non-nationals to undermine their obligations 
under international human rights law.

For example, Lebanese Presidential Decree 11614 
of 1969, as modified by Decree 296 of 2001, 
prohibits people who do "not carry a citizenship 
issued by a recognized state" from securing legal 
title to housing and land in Lebanon. This 
draconian legislation specifically targets 
Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees although they are 
not specified in the Decree. It means that 
Palestinian refugees, because virtually all 
stateless people in Lebanon are Palestinian 
refugees, and most Palestinian refugees are 
stateless: “No real right to housing, land or 
property of any kind may be acquired by any 
person that does not carry a citizenship issued 
by a recognized state, or by any person if such 
acquisition contradicts with the provisions of 
the constitution relating to the prohibition of 
Settlement (tawteen)." Article 1 of the amended Decree 296.

This law is in direct violation of the 
International Covenant on Economic, Social and 
Cultural Rights (ICESCR) ratified by Lebanon on 
November 24, 2008, as well as other treaty 
obligation and numerous provisions of customary international law.

We Petition because the legal prohibition on 
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon registering legal 
title to housing and land greatly diminishes 
their chance of enjoying security of tenure 
outside the camps, leaving most of them with 
little choice but to remain in the camps and 
gatherings. Lebanese law also prevents 
Palestinian refugees from inheriting housing or 
land, and from registering real estate, even if 
they have been paying for it in installments for years.

We Petition because we believe Lebanon’s 
Parliament will heed a sincere broadly based 
international urgent appeal to fulfill the unique 
Lebanese role in the region and exhibit its 
gifted people’s deeply ingrained humanitarianism. 
And because courageous Lebanese officials working 
for the enactment of legislation granting civil 
rights to Palestinian Refugees urge us to do so, 
that they may demonstrate international support 
for and expectation of, correcting this grave 
injustice that has also diminished Lebanon’s 
standing among the community of Nations. To its 
great credit Lebanon’s new Parliament appears 
ready to seriously consider the enactment of 
basic civil rights for its Palestinian Refugees 
including the right to work and the right to own 
a home, have a recognized ID document and to move 
freely inside Lebanon and outside the camps 
without fear of harassment or arbitrary arrest.

We Petition to give Lebanon’s Palestinian 
refugees a feeling of hope and power that many 
are in danger of losing and to convince them that 
ultimately power rests with the people themselves 
and, as has often happened in history they can 
use it as blacks, women and the anti-war movement 
have done in American history and that the 
anti-war movement must reconstitute and do again.

To paraphrase one of my Professors at Boston 
University, the late Howard Zinn, who later was 
also the inaugural speaker at the Boston 
University School of Law Seminar-Forum, which he 
helped me establish during the Vietnam war, (in 
order to bring guest speakers on social issues 
and enliven our law school curriculum, top heavy 
as it was, by way too much Corporate Taxation, 
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Estate planning 
etc) however dire the conditions, however many 
will advise in all sincerity that those in power 
will not allow even the most basic civil rights 
for Palestinians in Lebanon we cannot give up the 
game before all the cards, including those from a 
multitude of supporters around the world, have been played.

The obstacles may seem invincible and also our 
opponents in their determination to hold onto the 
status quo. But that apparent power has, again 
and again, proved vulnerable in history to human 
qualities less measurable than entrenched 
political power such as moral fervor, 
determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, 
wit, ingenuity, courage, and persistence. No 
rational analysis and calculation of the 
imbalance of power need deter people who are 
persuaded that the cause for civil rights for 
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is just.

Please join us!

Sign with us!

Distribute with us!

Post with us!

Make history with us!

Let’s do this together!

Please support the enactment of basic civil 
rights for our Palestinian sisters and brothers 
in Lebanon in the sure knowledge that when we 
succeed, and succeed we shall, you will personally have improved the World.

Contact: 
<mailto:palestinecivilrightscampaign at gmail.com>palestinecivilrightscampaign at gmail.com

Website: 
<http://www.palestinecivilrightscampaign.org/>www.palestinecivilrightscampaign.org
Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon

PLEASE SIGN HERE!

<http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html>http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html

"Affixing my name to this petition expresses my 
wish to personally "twin" in solidarity with one 
of Lebanon's Palestinian refugees as they and 
their Lebanese hosts continue to work and prepare for their Return."

Franklin P. Lamb, LLM,PhD
Director, Americans Concerned for
Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut

Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and 
the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC
Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp
Beirut Mobile: +961-70-497-804
<mailto:fplamb at gmail.com>fplamb at gmail.com




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