BEIRUT, December 9. /TASS/. An elderly man wearing dark old clothes is walking his guests along the narrow streets of Burj Barajneh Camp in Beirut passing an endless row of buildings that thousands and thousands of Palestinians call home. Tho people can hardly pass in these streets, one has to be pushed against a wall to give way to a scooter which is the main means of transport here.
Above threir heads there are electric wires entangled in a bizarre web connecting the houses built very close to each other. "Last year a child died of electric shock. Dozens of people died of it her", said the refugee.
Unlike strangers, the locals know their way around the camp very well. It seems impossible to escape the narrow streets of the maze: there are no signs, and most streets cannot be found on online maps.
The group makes a stop at an unremarkable door. The guests are invited to come in. A small, modest room with very little furniture in it, cigarette smoke, a flag hanging by the door in front of the entrance. This is the headquarters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The guests are offered to sit down and haev a cup of coffee. An elderly Palestinian is sitting at the table. "Do we hope to ever come back to our homeland?" he started answering the first question.
70 years have gone by
According to the UN, more than 470,000 Palestinian refugees are registered in Lebanon. These refugees are the people who left their homes during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-1949, with several generations of their descendants included. About half of them live in 12 official camps, located primarily in the country's west. In 2011, following the Syrian crisis, thousands of Syrian refugees also came here.
Shatila and Burj Barajneh camps on the south border of Lebanon look more like cramped city slums where poverty, overcrowding, and streets filled with trash, along with poor infrastructure reign supreme. However, in fact, this is a country inside the country: Lebanon's rules have no power here, the local authorities try to stay away from these areas, and the life in the camp is usually regulated by the refugees.
The refugees have very limited rights and opportunities. For instance, they are prohibited from working in dozens of fields, owning estate, their access to medical care and education is limited as well. In order to get these services outside the camp, they have to call private companies, which is something the majority of the refugees cannot afford.
Both camps are "celebrating" their 70th anniversaries this year. Up until now, there has hardly been any hope for the refugees to return to their homes given the Arab-Israeli impasse.
The old and the new refugees
Shatila Camp is greeting us with an endless market where they sell fruit, shoes, electronics and coal. It does not look like a traditional Eastern market at all though. Local refugees can buy everything they need here, but the a tourist will be disgusted by the scenery and smell od it all: rotting food, a garbage dump with lost sheep, children searching for some edible food, counters with chicken carcasses next to hens in cages, pedestrians who can easily get hurt by scooters that are literally everywhere. According to one of the locals, the majority of shops belongs to the Syrians, and prices are lower here than in any of Beirut's markers.
A small electric shop owner from Syria tells us that he has got the shop from his father, who managed to settle in Sweden. He is a pharmacist, but he cannot work in his field here. "I hope to settle in Sweden as well to be with my family. I have approached people who promised to help me with the documents, paid a lot of money, but it was a scheme. They left me with nothing. Now I/m trying to do everything through the UN, but it will take a while", he said.
Another family from Syria was more lucky. "We are going to Australia with my daughters soon", says one of female refugees living in a nearby house. Here, as in many other accomodations, the migrants have bare minimum and old furniture, but the houses are clean and everything is in order which one would not expect going up a dirty staircase.
There were about 500 buildings in the camp initially, but later they grew bigger, and the construction of new residential premises is often very chaotic, with essential standards failing to be observed. No one knows exact number of people living here. According to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), about 11,000 refugees are registered at the camps, however, according to unofficial data, the reality is more alarming — 22,000-40,000 refugees more than half of those being the Syrians.
According to a local migrant, a Palestinian man called Salekh, there are no problems with relations with the refugees from Syria, although the circumstances of these two caterories are very different. "Other organizations are handling the Syrians, they are waiting for quotas here and then they leave", he explained.
Salekh still feels like a refugee, although he was born at the camp in 1948 when his parents came to Lebanon. He has eight children, and they are all living here with their families. Speaking about life at the Shatila Camp eagerly, he is pessimistic about the thought of ever returning home. "The Americans and the Israeli do not want us to have our own state, and they will prevent it from happening", he believes.
The price of life
Given the limitations in Lebanon, the refugees find a way to earn some money either inside the camp, or try to find jobs in Beirut in construction or in shops owned by the Lebanese. Salary depends on the amount of work and simply on luck, varying from $400 to $800 per month. At the same time, an average family, as a rule a big family with many children, spends about $450 monthly only on food.
Refugees receive support from charitable organizations and through various UNRWA programs. However, according to the camp inhabitants, in recent years the amount of aid has declined: the agency created in December 1949 to help Palestine refugees is facing difficulties. In August 2018, the US, one of UNRWA's main donors, decided to wrap up its donations, citing problems in the institution's work. The corruption scandal made the situation even worse, as a result a number of countries suspended the payment of contributions to the UNRWA budget this summer, and its chief resigned.
There is a United Nations medical center at Shatila Camp where one can get free consultations, and two schools. Given the camp's low standard of living, it’s a little surprising to see quite a modern beuty salon in the street or schoolchildren with nice backpacks and clean white shirts. There are small shops and simple cafes with plastic furniture, you one can order home delivery, for example, a hookah.
Conflicts and disputes, as local residents say, are settled by the so-called security committee, which consists of members of the movements that are part of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Its representatives, for example, can catch a criminal and extradite him to the Lebanese police waiting outside the camp.
In the state of war
The border between Shatila and the adjacent Sabra district where refugees also live is quite vague. Sabra is not an official camp, however, these two places are connected, by tragic events as well. In September 1982 during the Israeli attack Lebanese units carried out a massacre killing according to various estimates from 700 to 3,500 people. These places also suffered during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990).
The building of the former hospital, which received Palestinian refugees until the mid-1980s, recalls the events of those years in Sabra. Currently there are refugee accomodations on the premises of this 12-storey building. Curtains instead of doors, dark dirty stairwell, electric wires hanging from the ceiling, crumbling plaster. And the stories of elderly women — the mothers of local families who have their lost sons, husbands, homeland.
Find ten differences
The Burj Barajneh Camp seems a little more prosperous at first, although in terms of architecture and design, as well as in terms of living standatds, it does not quite differ from Shatila. However it is cleaner, there are more neat shops, there are pharmacies, a game club where children spend time playing video games, and dental offices.
The camp residents believe that it has to do with the fact thet mostly Palestinians reside at Burj Barajneh on a permanent basis and there are less newcomers.
More than 19,000 refugees are officially registered at the camp, but locals claim that in reality the number is as high as 45,000 people.
Children study in one of the four UN schools, all of them located outside the camp due to lack of space. And recently, with the assistance of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, a medical center with an X-ray cabinet, rooms for simple operations and a hospital was opened.
About the faith
“Do we hope to return to our homeland ...” says an elderly Palestinian. “You must have heard about the American “deal of the century”. It does not contribute to us having any hope at all.”
According to him, it is very important to educate young people living at the camps so that they do not forget about the main Palestinian cause in these circumstances. “We’ve been here for several decades, but our children still strongly believe in this cause. Therefore, yes, of course, after all these years, deep down we still believe that we will return home.”