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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/lamb04122010.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/lamb04122010.html<br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">April 12,
2010<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Can Lebanon
Clean Up Its Act? <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Hiba's Story</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By
FRANKLIN LAMB <br><br>
</font><font size=3><i>Ein el Helwe Palestinian Refugee Camp,
Lebanon.<br><br>
</i></font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">M</font>
<font size=3>ore than six decades after their expulsion from Palestine,
Lebanon’s unwanted refugees just might be granted some basic civil
rights. Granting even the most elementary and normally taken for granted
civil rights to Palestinians in Lebanon won’t be easy and it may not be
pretty. Yet there is undeniable and growing Lebanese and international
resolve for Lebanon’s politicians to end a dark bleak chapter in Arab
brotherly relations.<br><br>
The disturbing paradox of Lebanon depriving its refugees of the most
elementary civil rights, some of which are even granted Palestinians by
their arch-nemesis, the Zionist occupiers of their own country, is
increasingly being condemned in Lebanon. In addition, there is the gaping
contradiction between the sweet words and the clarion trumpeting calls by
groups wanting to liberate Jerusalem and all of Palestine and enforce the
internationally mandated Right of Return (UNSCR 194), while at the same
time appearing to avert their eyes from the very ones seeking to return
and who exist in abject squalor, humiliation and indignity, thus
appearing to tolerate their brothers and sisters’ degradation. These
contradictions are motivating an expanding panoply of Lebanese leaders,
civil society organizations, side by side with local and international
NGO’s, to demand civil rights legislation from the current Cabinet and
Parliament. What civil rights advocates seek is compliance with basic
international law and indeed Lebanon’s Constitution, both sources of law
mandating civil rights for Palestine refugees including the right to work
and to own a home.<br><br>
In plenty of Lebanese neighborhoods, polite society often avoids the
subject of ‘haydoulik’ (‘they’) when a foreigner mentions the teeming and
squalid Palestinian camps, or brings up the subject of yet another local
media or NGO’s report detailing the alarming and accelerating
deterioration of the world’s oldest and largest refugee population. Close
to half of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees are crammed into 12 camps and
27 unofficial ‘gatherings’. Of the original 120,000 who were forced
across the full length of the Palestine-Lebanon border during the 1948
Nakba, their offspring now number close to 450,000some 425,640 of whom
are registered with the United Nations Refugee Works Administration
(UNRWA) as of April, 2010, and some also with the Lebanese Ministry of
Interior. Since 1948, roughly 22 per cent of the refugees in Lebanon have
left loved ones and family members to seek jobs abroad so as to remit
their foreign earnings back to the fetid camps. Lebanon leads the world
in the amount of per capita in bound remittances, a significant
contribution to its Gross Domestic Product.<br><br>
The Untouchables<br><br>
According to a Sunni Muslim family in the Sanayeh area of Beirut who has
a long history of support for the Palestinians, including two sons who
fought with the PLO against Israeli forces in 1982-83, a father who used
to hide sensitive PLO documents inside his apartment walls as Israeli
forces searched West Beirut house to house in the fall of 1982, and a
mother who prepared home cooked meals during the summer of 1982 for ‘Abu
Ammar’ (Yassir Arafat) and ‘Abu Jihad’ (Khalil al Wazir) and their office
staffs, between 90-95 per cent of Lebanese have never been inside a
Palestinian camp. A teen-age member of the same Beirut family snarled to
this observer, “Not since the ( 1982 ) Sabra-Shatila Massacre has a group
of our Lebanese brothers visited a Palestinian camp!”, referring to the
right wing Phalange Lebanese groups who conducted the camp slaughter
after being egged-on and equipped by the occupying Israeli military
leadership including Israel’s then Minister of Defense, Ariel
Sharon.<br><br>
With the exception of Druze leader, MP Walid Jumblatt, and a couple of
Hezbollah members of Parliament, and one from the Saad Hariri Future
Movement, not one member of the 128 member Parliament or the 30 Member
Cabinet has acknowledged visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in the past
five years, according to a March 2010 survey taken by the Sabra Shatila
Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon. For some of
Lebanon’s population the very idea of “ going inside” a camp in enough to
produce an exaggerated grimace.<br><br>
As shocking as it is true, Lebanon by refusing to even allow Palestinians
the right to work in dozens of professions or to own homes, stands in
clear violation of no fewer than 43 international legal obligations
contained in treaties, conventions, the 1948 Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which Lebanon played a major role in drafting,
international customary law, and indeed its own Constitution.<br><br>
The arguments against granting civil rights to Palestine refugees are
numerous, with some as imaginative as they are spurious. They vary widely
depending on who from which of the 18 confessions is discussing the
subject.<br><br>
Some arguments for the status quo currently being heard by advocates
working to change Lebanon’s right to work and home ownership laws include
the following sampling:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>“If we grant civil rights to our Palestinian Refugees it could
interfere with their Right of Return!”<br><br>
<dd>“How are Palestine Refugees in Lebanon deprived of the civil right to
work since some do manage to find a job illegally.”<br><br>
<dd>“The Palestinian refugee population poses a security risk for Lebanon
and before any civil rights are discussed this must be
resolved.”<br><br>
<dd>“Palestinians are Sunni Muslim and giving them civil rights will
interfere with the fragile sectarian balance among Christian, Druze and
Shia Muslims.”<br><br>
<dd>“Why shouldn’t Lebanon take more time considering civil rights for
the Palestinian Refugee families? At least their children are being
looked after in UNWRA schools and are fine. Their elders must be more
patient and haven’t the Palestinians caused many of their own
problems.”<br><br>
<dd>“Lebanon needs more time to straighten out the “situation” with the
Palestinians. Also, don’t forget, Lebanon is quietly issuing
Identification Cards to the 5000 plus Palestinian refugees who have never
had either UNRWA or Interior Ministry registrations subjecting them to
arrest at any time. So aren’t we making solid progress?”<br><br>
<dd>“Since all other foreigners need work permits, how has the
requirement that Palestine Refugees obtain a work permit unfairly
affected Palestinians right to work in Lebanon?”<br><br>
<dd>“Lebanese women also are deprived of civil rights. They must get
theirs before Palestine Refugees are given any.”<br><br>
<dd>“Palestinian refugees don’t contribute to Lebanon’s economy so why
should Lebanon allow them the right to work?”<br><br>
<dd>“ Lebanon is a very small country and we cannot afford to allow
refugees to own a home, given our limited available housing space.”
<br><br>
<dd>“If Lebanon grants civil rights to the Palestinian Refugees, they may
become too comfortable and seek permanency in Lebanon via Naturalization
(Tawtin)”<br><br>
</dl>An analysis of these and other arguments against granting civil
rights to Palestine refugees will be considered in a future instalment of
this discussion but should any of these arguments prevail with
Parliament, a least a quarter million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
will remain deprived of achieving much more than subsistence during their
wait and struggle to return to Palestine.<br><br>
Miss Hiba Hajj<br><br>
One of the hundreds of thousands wretched refuse facing continuing
condemnation is a gifted 15 year old named Hiba Hajj, born and raised in
the teeming 90,000 plus resident Ein el Helwe Palestinian Camp, in the
6000 year old town of Saida Lebanon.<br><br>
Hiba, is a savvy, totally charming, hijabed Palestinian youngster who
lives with her large family near the Sharia Bustan Yahoudi (Jewish Park
Street) area of Ein el Helweh (‘Eye of the Beauty’ or ‘Source of sweet
water’). Hiba’s neighborhood is named after the Jewish community that
used to live in the quarter before Zionist colonials invaded Palestine.
Most Jews who stayed in Lebanon after 1948 left during the 1982 Israeli
invasion and the subsequent 18 year occupation-fewer than 30 are thought
to remain in the country today.<br><br>
To this foreign observer, when Hiba (‘gift from God’) relates her story
of dreams defered, she becomes every Palestinian Refugee in Lebanon and
her personal and anguished narrative embodies the urgency and historical
imperative for Lebanon to immediately grant the most elementary civil
rights for her and Hiba’s close to 450,000 fellow Palestinian
refugee.<br><br>
Like many of her friends, Hiba, reputed to be one of the best female
teenage football players and long distance runners in Lebanon (she runs
an approximate 5 minute 20 second mile on her slower days) is considering
dropping out of school to help support her family , whose income has
plummeted since the recent fighting between camp factions because, as she
explains to an American visitor, people are too afraid to enter the camp
to have their cars fixed at her father’s auto repair shop. The American
Embassy has instructed the Lebanese army which has blocked off seven
entrances to the camp and mans checkpoints at the four remaining
entrances to Ein el Helwe, not to allow American passport holders inside
the camp “for their personal safety”.<br><br>
Hiba often spends her free time at her sister Zeina’s home, filled with
four squirming babies, which is located in the explosive no-man’s-land
known as Taamir, between the boundary of Ein al-Hilweh and one of the
Lebanese army checkpoints that overlooks the camp.<br><br>
Hiba’s peers consider her an expert on the camps factions, that range
from the Saudi Wahhabi Takfiri groups who she says, “want to kill us
Muslims and anyone else who don’t follow their Wahabist version of our
religion”, to Osbat al-Nour (League of Light), Ansar Allah (Followers of
God), Fatah al Islam remnants on the lam from the 15 week battle at Nahr
al Bared in the summer of 2007, Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of Greater Syria)
Islamic Jihad, Asbat-al-Ansar (League of Followers) seven or eight
Palestinian factions including Fatah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Ahmad Jebril’s Syrian bankrolled Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, the Democratic
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the defunct Saiqa, along
with some upstart secretive and well armed global jihadist cells sporting
new heavy weapons from Iraq according to camp officials, courtesy of US
military inventory “shrinkage.”<br><br>
“Hiba acts crazy sometimes,” her older sister anguishes, “ and our family
worries about her. I have seen her walk into the center of a gathering of
young fighters, many of whom she knows from rival gangs while they are
yelling and threatening to shoot each other. Just last month she grabbed
a boy’s AK-47 from him just as he took aim at a rival and she screamed at
the boys to go home and read the Koran!” And they left without firing one
shot”<br><br>
Hiba needs to stay in school where she is an excellent student but like
so many Palestinian teenagers she sees no point because she can do
nothing with an advanced education. For all her energy and ‘don’t blame
others just make your own life the way you want it’ attitude Hiba grows
introspective and seems sad as she explains to visitors what she would
like to do with her life.<br><br>
Like all Palestinian refugees born in Lebanon, Hiba is stateless and
unprotected, brought up in the misery and hopelessness of a Lebanese
Palestinian refugee camp. This sweet kid, like all Palestinian refugees,
has no civil or political rights in Lebanon. She is barred from working
in over 70 professions, cannot own or inherit property, is subject to
I.D. checks every time she enters or exits the camp, and has no access to
public healthcare or public education.<br><br>
No Palestinian need apply<br><br>
Her brother Ahmad explains: " To start off, if you are a ‘camp kid’
in Lebanon that is a big strike against you. For us we feel there is
nothing here. Our country is there (he points in the direction of the
Palestinian border 35 miles South). There is nothing to do here, maybe
play games on the internet if you can find somewhere with a connection-if
you go and play games at the internet place, you're happy that you did
something for the day. Some of my friends accept a small salary and join
a militia group."<br><br>
Refugee-camp teenagers like Hiba once fuelled the anger and resistance to
Israel occupying their land. “Not now” says Ahmad "Much of that
anger has turned into depression, increasing drug use, gang violence,
dropping out of school, domestic violence, feelings of hopelessness.
"<br><br>
“My sister wants to become an eye doctor”, he explains, “She has no
chance”.<br><br>
Today, Palestinians in Lebanon continue to suffer from draconian measures
which the Lebanese state claims are needed to prevent them from becoming
permanent guests. <br><br>
As of February 10, 2010, the following dozens of jobs remain off limits
to Palestinians in Lebanon per Ministry of Labor Regulation No.
10l1--either because they are restricted to Lebanese nationals, or are
forbidden due to the Reciprocity requirements. Since Palestine is not
recognized by Lebanon as a country it is impossible to fulfill the
Reciprocity requirement, since the job seeker must be licensed in his
recognized country and his country must allow a Lebanese to work at the
same job. In addition, a Palestinian job seeker must have been a very
expensive and difficult to obtain work permit by the Lebanese
government.. The Minister of Labor can theoretically exempt a person from
the laws for certain jobs if the job-seeker:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>* has been residing in Lebanon since birth<br><br>
<dd>* has a Lebanese mother<br><br>
<dd>* has been married to a Lebanese woman for more than one year.
<br><br>
<dd>* or if he or she is from a recognized country that allows Lebanese
nationals to do the same job, i.e. the barrier of Reciprocity
again.<br><br>
</dl>The jobs that Hiba and her fellow refugees are barred from include
the following updated forbidden careers:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“Archeology Guide, Banking and administrative work of all kinds,
particularly: Manager-Assistant manager-Staff
manager-Treasurer-Accountant-Secretary Manager
Clerk-Documentalist-Archivist, Computer worker-Commercial
representative-Marketing representative-Forman-Warehouse
keeper-Salesman-Jeweler-Tailor-Darning worker with the exception of
darning carpets-Electrical installations-Mechanics and
maintenance-Painters, Glass panes
installer-Doorman-Watchman-Driver-Waiter-Hairdresser-Electronic
work-Arabic food chef, All technical professions in the construction
sector and its derivatives such as tiling, coating, plastering,
installation of aluminum, iron, wood or decoration works and the
like-Teaching at the elementary, intermediate and secondary levels with
the exception of foreign language teacher when necessary, hairdressing,
Ironing and dry-cleaning upholstery, publishing, printing, Engineering
work in all specialties, Smithery and upholstery work. All kinds of work
in pharmacies, drug warehouses and medical laboratories. In general all
occupations and professions which can be filled by Lebanese nationals-
money changer, real estate agent, attorney, physician, dentist, taxi
driver or driver training instructor, registered nurse or assistant
nurse, or other job in the Medical field, dentistry, health controller,
any job in the engineering field, licensed health controller, medical
laboratory worker, clinical health industry jobs, prosthetic devices
fitter, certified accountants, dental laboratory science technician, jobs
relating to nutrition and meals, topography, physiotherapy, veterinary
medicine.”<br><br>
</dl>The only four jobs listed by the Lebanese Ministry of Labor that are
open to Palestinian refugees are:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>1. midwife<br><br>
<dd>2. financial brokerage firm owner<br><br>
<dd>3. roving photographer<br><br>
<dd>4. land surveyor.<br><br>
</dl>All Palestinian job seekers for the “available” four jobs are
required to have been issued the nearly impossible to obtain work
permit.<br><br>
“This scheme by Lebanon is among the most egregious easily preventable
massive human rights violations imaginable, given what the largest and
oldest refugee population on earth has been through”, according to Dr.
Suoheil El-Natour, long time analyst of the Palestinian camp populations
in Lebanon, and director of a Human Development Center (HDC) in Mar Elias
camp.<br><br>
Meanwhile, Hiba has promised her family and the Palestine Civil Rights
Campaign-Lebanon that she will stay in school through the current
academic year to see what Parliament will do about allowing Palestine
refugees some basic civil rights. She has joined the PCRC from her camp
and recently emailed her colleagues in Shatila Camp to get to work on the
Petition drive to Parliament with the following message:<br><br>
“Failure is not an option for us, our only choice is success.”<br><br>
The online version of the hard copy Petition can be signed at:
<a href="http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html">
http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html</a>.<br><br>
Franklin Lamb</b> is a researcher and volunteer with the PCRC in Lebanon.
He can be reached at
<a href="mailto:fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org">
fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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