Two aspects make the convergence of building and demolition manifested in the Airport Bridge and the Dahiya (the Shi’a “suburbs” of southern Beirut) metaphors for the complexity of relations between the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their Lebanese hosts, and their Israeli adversaries. First, the scale of Israeli violence has thrown the spotlight on recent shifts in local relations and alliances of the Palestinians in surprising, and sometimes poignant, ways. Secondly, contrary to the public pronouncements of the Lebanese state, the “construction” project is considered by many Palestinians –and some of their Shi’a neighbours– to be an urban planning disaster. Struggles surrounding this project are only another expression of realignments in the relations between the aforementioned actors. These realignments transcend sectarian identities and past histories in ways that belie ominous predictions about the Sunni-Shi’a rift in the Middle East. What I hope to do in this brief article is to expand on these themes and locate them in their particular historical and sociological context, in order to better understand the location of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon today.
THE CONTENTIOUS PALESTINIAN PRESENCE IN LEBANON (1948-2006)
The presence of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon has always been complicated by the local complexity of sectarian conflict and the regional calculus of power. In 1948, some 100,000 Palestinians who fled or were evicted from their homes in Palestine took refuge in Lebanon. They found many of their hosts poorer than they had been and some even encountered anti-Sunni prejudice among the southern Lebanese villagers.1 Others, however, were moved by the generosity of these hosts. As Umm Jamal recounted nearly more than fifty years later:
[In Qana] we lived in poverty; the men who were finding work were only getting 2 livres, and the women were getting only 75 ’irshes and sometimes they would give me one livre. The people in Qana were as poor as the Palestinians, so life was hard. My father who was used to tending trees and farming wanted to find this kind of job. We were renting our home from a [Shi’a] family, but they stopped taking rent from us and we stayed in their house as if we were their family; but my father stopped taking his wages from them [in return for the lodging]. The people of the south were kind people, unlike other people now.... 2
Today, nearly 400,000 Palestinian refugees are registered with the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) in Lebanon, and half of them reside in twelve refugee camps, mostly located in Beirut, the predominantly Shi’a areas of southern Lebanon and the Biqa‘ Valley.3 From the very beginning, the Palestinian refugees –whose number amounted to ten percent of the Lebanese population– were considered a threat to the “fragile sectarian composition” of Lebanon: their being predominantly Sunni Muslims imperilled the politically dominant Maronite Christians, and placed them in direct competition for jobs and resources with the numerically superior but politically disempowered Shi’a underclass. Furthermore, with the emergence and predominance of the PLO in the 1960s and 1970s, the radical politics of the Palestinian national movement was met with enthusiasm and support by large numbers of Sunnis, Druze, Shi’a, and others, but sowed anxiety and fear among the Lebanese elite who saw their continued rule jeopardised by the revolutionary possibilities promised by the Palestinian national movement.4
In addition to the confessional calculations of the Lebanese sectarian elite, some Palestinian militants entrenched in the predominantly Shi’a southern Lebanon generated frictions in their interactions with the local population. The arrogance and “often poor behavior towards the Lebanese population exhibited by some” guerrillas of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) exacerbated militant-civilian tensions and were not helped by official PLO position vis-à-vis its local allies.5 As an example of the latter, in 1981, and then again in January and April 1982, in the south, the PLO entered the internecine fighting between the Shi’a Amal militia and other Lebanese organizations, shelled Shi’a villages, enraging many in the Shi’a community and sowing the seeds of future conflicts.6
Israel, which regarded the PLO presence and guerrilla operations in Lebanon a threat, sought to take advantage of these tensions. Throughout the 1970s, and especially in the early 1980s, “Israeli attacks were … directed at civilians, with the objective of alienating them from the PLO and exacerbating Palestinian-Lebanese tensions.”7 Thousands of military incursions, aerial bombardments, and two full-scale invasions by the Israeli military in 1978 and 1982 led to a perpetual cycle of uprooting and return for the southern Lebanese Shi’a and Christians who eventually came to blame the PLO for their predicament, such that the 1982 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon was met by the jubilation of some local villagers.8 The June 1982 War culminated in the PLO evacuation from Lebanon and the subsequent massacre of over 1,200 residents of Sabra and Shatila at the hands of the Maronite Lebanese Forces and the Israeli proxy, the South Lebanese Army.9 The horrors of Sabra and Shatila were visited upon not only the Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila, but also the Shi’a families who had been displaced from the South and who lived in the neighbourhood and the camp. Indeed, the Shi’a Miqdad family, one of whose members is today the groundskeeper of the Sabra/Shatila massacre site, lost thirty members in the slaughter.10 In all, twenty-seven percent of the named victims of that massacre were Shi’a.11
The massacre at Sabra and Shatila, however, wasn’t the last of the full-scale conflicts between the Palestinians and the Lebanese. The Shi’a Amal militia, which had originally been trained and armed by the PLO, but which had conflicted with it as early as the 1980s, sought to consolidate its power in southern Lebanon in the mid-1980s. It fought its former allies among Muslims and Leftists in West Beirut and southern Lebanon,12 and between 1985 and 1988, supported by Syria, placed the Palestinian refugee camps of Beirut and southern Lebanon under intermittent sieges which lasted as long as six months and resulted in the deaths of thousands of refugees. These sieges, which came to be know as the War of the Camps, left an indelible mark on Palestinians’ memories, as water, food, and medicine were cut off, women were killed by sniper fire as they tried to retrieve water from communal taps at the edges of the camps, and camp residents resorted to eating cats and dogs.13 Interestingly, however, the lines of conflict were not wholly drawn along sectarian lines. “The reluctance of some regional [Amal] commanders, such as Mahmud al-Faqih in Nabatiyya, to mobilize their followers or to permit deployment of Amal units from other areas [to fight the Palestinians] was an added constraint [on Amal action].”14 More importantly, the nascent Shi’a militia of Hizbullah came to aid the Palestinians in concrete ways still appreciated in the camps.15
In 1982, the head of Amal, Nabih Berri had predicted that if the Israelis remained in Lebanon for any length of time, the Shi’a population of Lebanon would become radicalised as the Palestinians before them had done.16 Hizbullah, which at its inception included militant breakaway members of Amal, was the realisation of Berri’s prediction.17 Hizbullah’s ideological and organisational competition with Amal and its sense of solidarity with Palestinians placed it firmly on the side of the besieged camp refugees. During the War of the Camps, Hizbullah earned the affection and loyalty of many Palestinians when its fighters risked their lives to break the Amal siege to deliver food, milk, medicine, and pumps for artesian wells to the Palestinians in Burj aj-Barajna, Rashidiyya, and Shatila camps.18 Hizbullah solidarity with Palestinians through the War of the Camps affected the refugees in such a way that when I began my research in the camps in 2000, whenever the refugees spoke of “the Shi’a” as a group, they made cautious exceptions for Hizbullah and distinguished it “from the rest” of the Shi’a.
Since the end of the civil war in 1990, Hizbullah has been a vocal advocate of the Palestinian refugees’ civil rights in Lebanon. In fact, after decades of draconian prohibitions on the refugees’ right to work and their access to jobs in Lebanon, in June 2005, the Lebanese Labour Minister, Trad Hamadeh, who is an ally (through not a member) of Hizbullah in the cabinet, issued a decree allowing Palestinians access to menial and clerical jobs previously barred to them. Hizbullah has also demonstrated its solidarity with the Palestinians by dedicating much of the programming of their television station al-Manar to Palestine and the Palestinians. Some of these programmes have been devoted to the refugees, their camps, their concerns, and their oral histories.19 The relations between Hizbullah and Palestinian refugees, however, are complicated by the sometimes overt hostility between Hizbullah and the largest and oldest Palestinian political faction representing the Palestinians, Fatah. The hostilities have meant that solidary sentiments between the refugees and their local allies have been tempered by political considerations and contentions.
If a complicated friendship defines the relationship of the Palestinian refugees and Hizbullah in Lebanon, memories of violence and long-standing hostilities shape the attitude of most other Lebanese towards the Palestinians in their midst. Public opinion polls conducted in Lebanon repeatedly confirm the widespread desire of the great majority of the Lebanese public to see the Palestinians removed from their midst. In the years immediately after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, of all sectarian groups, only the Sunni co-religionists of the Palestinians and to a lesser extent the Druze minority had favourable and friendly reactions towards the Palestinian refugees.20 The profound sense of uncertainty generated by the atmosphere of hostility is compounded by the scapegoating of Palestinians for many of the ills within the Lebanese society, including political unrest, social fissures, criminal activities, and even the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri. Indeed these hostile sentiments have become crystallised in the complex convergence of local support for the United Nation Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for the disarmament of not only Hizbullah, but also the Palestinian refugees.21
It was during the uneasy stand-off between various Palestinian factions, the Lebanese state, Hizbullah, and assorted other sub- and supra-state actors over UNSC1559 that the July War of 2006 convulsed Lebanon and consolidated nascent realignments.
THE JULY WAR, 2006
What struck most local observers of the July War 2006 was how the Israeli military action and rhetoric seemed to recycle their action and rhetoric in previous wars against Lebanon. The spokespersons for the Israeli military asserted that their goal was “pushing Hizbullah out of southern Lebanon” as if Hizbullah was not indigenous to the area, but rather a “foreign” force as the PLO had purportedly been before 1982.22
More importantly, the Israeli military resorted to its modus operandi of attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure in order to turn local populations against Hizbullah. If the Israeli strategists had hoped that the residents of southern Lebanon would greet the Israeli military joyously, or that indeed the internal fissures within Lebanon would be widened and anti-Hizbullah alliances would spring up, they were mistaken. The Israeli military’s brutal assault against civilians resulted in a unification –however ephemeral– of the contentious social groups that make up Lebanon’s complex confessional checkerboard. The nearly one-million displaced Shi’a Lebanese who poured into Beirut and other cities in Lebanon were met by the generally warm reception of the local populations even in Sunni and Maronite Christian neighbourhoods and villages. In southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, the complex mixture of solidarity, empathy, suspicion, and sometimes downright hostility the Palestinian refugees feel for their Shi’a neighbours was wholly replaced by a vocal, warm, and genuine solidary sentiment.
The refugee camps of al-Buss, Burj al-Shamali and Rashidiyya, all located near the city of Tyre in the south, and all vulnerable to the Israeli shelling of the area, were the first to open their doors to the Lebanese refugees pouring in from their bombarded villages closer to the border. UNRWA reported an influx of nearly 5,000 non-camp Palestinians and displaced Lebanese refugees into the three camps.23 The Palestinian residents of the camps brought blankets and food to the UNRWA schools which were used to shelter the displaced.24 The absurdity of the situation was not lost on the Palestinians, as Ibrahim al-Ali, a Palestinian social worker, said that “the irony is that refugees are accepting citizens from their own country.”25 Any rivalries between Palestinians and their hosts were forgotten. A Rashidiyya camp official said, “In days like these, politics are something else.”26 In the southern suburbs of Beirut (the Dahiya), several hundred families –primarily mixed Lebanese-Palestinian ones residing outside the camp– moved into the Burj al-Barajna camp. Most were taken in by relatives; others were housed in public buildings and supported by local NGOs.
As the Saida municipal infrastructure was overwhelmed by the number of Lebanese refugees fleeing the fighting to their south, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Saida, Ain al-Hilwa, and its smaller neighbour Mieh-Mieh, also took in more than 5,000 displaced persons from the Tyre area, most of whom were hosted by Palestinian families in their homes, while the UNRWA facilities in Saida opened their doors to 762 Shi’a refugees in the coming days.27 As the new Shi’a refugees settled amidst the longer-term Palestinian refugees, it increasingly became clear to both that Israeli attacks against civilian populations and local political re-alignments had put the formerly standoffish populations on the same side. One Lebanese refugee at Ain al-Hilwa marvelled at the transformed situation, “I never thought I would have to flee to a Palestinian camp. I always thought that the war was mainly between Israel and the Palestinians.”28 A Palestinian physician in Ain al-Hilwa was also acutely aware of the similarities between the 1982 and 2006 invasions of Lebanon by Israel: “In 1982, we were on the run, and now it’s the Lebanese.” He continued, “But believe me; we are not welcoming Israeli soldiers into Lebanon,” obliquely referring to the jubilation with which the residents of southern Lebanon had greeted the Israelis so many years ago, and indicating that today, solidary sentiments took the place of past hostilities.29 Palestinian residents of the camps repeatedly told reporters and other observers that the war indeed showed the necessary and “natural brotherhood” of the Palestinians and the displaced. After all, many indicated, they supported Hizbullah’s struggle against their common adversary and by hosting the displaced Lebanese, the Palestinians were only exhibiting this support.
Palestinians could play host to the Lebanese refugees because, surprisingly, in the Israeli air campaign waged against Lebanese residential areas, the Palestinian refugee camps were by-and-large spared the kind of destruction many of their neighbours had suffered. Rashidiyya was struck in the first day of the war and lost one resident.30 Burj al-Shamali and al-Buss were not directly targeted but were hit as the neighbourhood in which it is located was bombarded.31 All three camps were left without any electricity for the duration of the hostilities.32
Ain al-Hilwa was the only camp to be specifically targeted three times.33 Ain al-Hilwa has a reputation as the most politically militant refugee camp in Lebanon, and has over the years become the hospitable camp to Islamist Palestinian organizations. The camp also houses the offices of several smaller political groups known to have cordial relations with Hizbullah. During the first Israeli attack against Ain al-Hilwa, on 9 August, two missiles were fired at the densely populated camp.34 The Israeli military claimed that it was targeting a Hizbullah fighter’s house. In fact the target had been the home of Munir Maqdah, a Palestinian militant known to oppose Fatah policies and to act as an occasional Hizbullah ally. The attack destroyed a small residential building and damaged a political office nearby.35 At least two civilians were killed and many others were injured.36 On 13 August, during the intensified Israeli bombing campaign in the hours leading to the cease-fire, Israeli fighter jets again attacked Ain al-Hilwa. The buildings targeted and destroyed were a kindergarten and the offices of a drinking-water project known to be funded by an Iranian charity. The attacks killed a security guard and a teenager sleeping next door and injured fifteen others.37 The third attack took place only an hour before the declaration of the ceasefire, and killed a sanitation worker employed by the UNRWA and injured three others. The bombing also destroyed several buildings on the edges of the camp and displaced eighteen Palestinian families.38
I was told that during the intensive bombings of the Dahiya neighbourhoods of Harat Hrayk and Burj al-Barajna, the precarious buildings of the Burj al-Barajna camp were moving from side to side “as if dancing” and that several weaker structures had collapsed from the force of nearby explosions.39 Several Burj al-Barajna camp residents were caught in the bombing of the Dahiya and perished alongside their neighbours.40 Their images, banded with black, adorn the pock-marked walls of the Burj al-Barajna neighbourhood. Although camp residents with whom I spoke had survived the Israeli invasion of 1982 and several subsequent conflicts, many told me that nothing compared with the intensity of the bombardment they experienced during the 33 days of the July War.
REALIGNED RELATIONS AND UNCERTAIN FUTURES
Although the July War of 2006 will yet reshape the Lebanese political landscape, as regards the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, it has only thrown the spotlight on the realignments already underway between the Palestinian refugees and various Lebanese actors. An assessment of the Palestinian refugees’ situation in Lebanon after the July War highlights three interrelated themes: the continued socioeconomic marginalisation of the Palestinian refugees; Palestinian anxieties about disarmament; and the consolidation of solidary relations between Palestinian refugees and Hizbullah, which are not only based on ideological kinship, but also the similarity of their circumstances.
The years since the end of the Lebanese civil war and leading to the July War have not been kind to Palestinians. Their position not only within the Lebanese society but also within the broader transnational Palestinian community has been much reduced. If in the 1960s and 1970s they were at the heart of the Palestinian national movement, today they are on the margins of it. Their vocal nationalism and history of sacrifice places an obligation on the Palestinian Authority to take note of their demands, even if only in the realm of rhetoric;41 however, over the years, most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have felt entirely abandoned by the PA. As the refugees increasingly despair of PA support for their right to repatriate to their homes in Israel or even to the putative state of Palestine, the refugees find other courses and futures foreclosed.42
In turn, almost all Lebanese groups are vociferous proponents of the Palestinian right of return, if for no other reason because Palestinian return would result in their decampment from Lebanon. Most Lebanese groups are opposed to granting Palestinians further civil rights for fear of their tawtin or “implantation” in Lebanon. Since the end of the civil war, laws have been passed and decrees have been issued which prohibit Palestinian ownership or inheritance of properties in Lebanon, limit their access to university education, and place them under greater surveillance and control. Even the decree which has allowed Palestinian refugees access to menial and clerical jobs is viewed with suspicion by the refugees. After all, the decree was issued after the Syrian military’s withdrawal from Lebanon led to a massive shortage of manual (Syrian) labour there. Because the decree still bars Palestinians from professional positions, most attribute this munificence to Lebanon’s appetite for cheap manual labour. The decree has made it easier for some refugees to obtain manual work, but for many others it may be meaningless, as many cannot afford the hundreds of dollars required to secure a work permit.43
Furthermore, explicit policies which circumscribe Palestinian rights are accompanied by practices and projects which –perhaps unintentionally– further marginalise them. For example, for the 20,000 Palestinian refugees who live in the Burj al-Barajna camp, the Lebanese government’s ostensible reconstruction and “development” plans that funds the Airport Expressway near their camp –Project Elissar– is indeed not really about “development.” Elissar has had the authority to expropriate land, and it has done so by slicing a gash through the open space separating the camp from the neighbourhood. In effect, Elissar has deprived thousands of camp children from their only playground. In fact, a great deal of struggle by Palestinians –as well as their Shi’a neighbours– went into minutely changing the route of the Expressway so as to prevent the destruction of houses in the Burj al-Barajna neighbourhood and camp. The same sort of struggle went into preserving the Shatila cemetery from the bulldozers that threatened its destruction in service of road-building. Indeed, the Shatila cemetery is today located –rather incongruously– in a traffic roundabout. Over the last decade and a half, the politics of reconstruction have placed the Sunni elite, led by Hariri, at loggerheads with their co-religionist Palestinians, while the Hizbullah-run municipalities which surround Palestinian camps in southern Beirut have formed cordial and cooperative relations with the camp administrators. The Palestinian alliance with Hizbullah in Lebanon belies the possibilities of a Sunni-Shi’a rift so ominously advanced from a variety of quarters. Whether or not a reconstruction project following the July War 2006 will exacerbate the spatial pressure on Palestinians or result in other realignments is yet to be seen. A seeming competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia to fund reconstruction is emerging which may yet affect the Palestinian camps’ access to resources in as yet indeterminate ways. Furthermore, the need for construction workers and other such menial labourers may open more work opportunities for Palestinians in the coming years.
The second theme highlighted by the War is the calls for Palestinian disarmament in Lebanon. In 2004, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 –sponsored by the US and France and supported by influential Sunni and Maronite leaders, including the late Rafiq Hariri– called “upon all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon” and demanded “the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias.”44 From the very beginning, it was obvious to all concerned parties that the militias concerned were Hizbullah and the Palestinian factions. After the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005, external and internal pressure for disarmament on the Palestinians increased perceptibly. Indeed, Israeli spokespersons repeatedly stated the goals of their war against Lebanon in 2006 to be the forcible implementation of the terms of UNSC1559. In the wake of the July War, it increasingly seems unlikely that there will be an immediate move to disarm Hizbullah, but it is not wholly clear whether the Lebanese state will insist on disarming Palestinians.
The Palestinian reluctance to give up their arms arises from their experience of extreme violence during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), when thousands of Palestinians were killed –sometimes in horrific massacres– and their camps and communities were attacked, destroyed, and razed in successive sieges.45 The refugees believe that the guns in the hands of the factions inside the camps are their ultimate protection, and find the calls for their disarmament distressing. Indeed, one long-time resident of Shatila refugee camp told a reporter, “I’m frightened, frightened to death. If we are disarmed, who’s going to take care of us? We were disarmed once before, and look what happened,”46 alluding to the Sabra/Shatila massacres which occurred after the PLO was evacuated from Lebanon in 1982.
In addition to the arms held by security corps inside the camps, a handful of small military bases outside the camps are operated by the Syria-sponsored Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) and Fatah-Intifada. Prior to the July War, activities to disarm these groups had accelerated and even had led to clashes between PFLP-GC fighters and the Lebanese army in May 2006. The sense that disarming these groups is inevitable is bolstered by Abu Mazen’s implicit agreement with the Lebanese government’s plan “to disarm Palestinian groups outside the country’s 12 refugee camps in six months.”47 The extent to which the Lebanese state will be willing or able to disarm these groups depends on a constellation of factors which include the relative calm within Lebanon, the fortune of Hizbullah in Lebanese politics, the strength of Syria’s hands in the coming months, and external pressures from Israel, US, or indeed various Palestinian groups in favour of or opposed to disarming these anti-PLO and pro-Syrian groups. What the war has done is that it has simultaneously –and paradoxically– strengthened the prestige of Hizbullah and increased the legitimacy of the Lebanese military. If Hizbullah chooses to observe local sensitivities as it seems to have been in the last few weeks –speaking directly and apologising to the Lebanese people and attempting to assuage their anxieties about Hizbullah’s actions– it may not want to interfere in the disarmament of Fatah-Intifada and PFLP-GC. Thus the shape and balance of military power in Lebanon remains unpredictable and uncertain.
What can however be asserted with some certainty is the extent to which the July War has consolidated relations between Palestinian refugees and Hizbullah. An obvious basis of solidary sentiment between these two political actors is the devotion of both to the Palestinian cause. While the definition of the “cause” given by Palestinian nationalists and the Islamists of Hizbullah may be at variance, there is no doubt that the ideology of militant anti-Zionism is shared by both. Hizbullah has over the years been careful to nurture its pan-Arab nationalist credentials, and its political credibility been massively enhanced by its action and rhetoric in the July War. If before the war, the Hizbullah leader, Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah, was respected among Palestinian refugees, he is now, after Hizbullah’s impressive military performance in the war, wildly popular. In my visits to Palestinian refugee camps, I have found the prevalence of the images of Nasrallah and of Hizbullah flags striking. While before the July War, such images were to be found here and there on the margins of the camp, their overwhelming conspicuousness throughout the camp was definitely something new. The triumphant music praising Hizbullah, Nasrallah, and Katyushas play just as loudly inside the camps as they do outside them in the Shi’a neighbourhoods. If before the war, Hizbullah’s al-Manar had been only one of several news channels playing on the camp televisions, it has become a far more prominent source of news for the Palestinians in the camp.48 Also remarkable is that today even relatively apolitical youth in the camps speak admiringly of Nasrallah. Legends about the man circulate around the camp, and Hizbullah’s steadfastness, discipline, and credibility are considered “necessary if we are to liberate Palestine.”49
But the possible solidarity between Palestinian and the Shi’a has a material basis also. As reconstruction efforts begin, and as Hizbullah distributes cash payments to families whose houses were destroyed in the bombings, it has compensated those Palestinian families formerly resident in Shi’a neighbourhoods who have lost their homes with the same generosity and efficiency that it has their Shi’a neighbours and it has not made any sectarian or national distinction in distribution of aid.50 More importantly, what becomes increasingly obvious as one travels through the Dahiya, the South, and the Biqa’ Valley, all predominated by the Shi’a community of Lebanon, is how much the July War of 2006 has been a war against the poor. Much of the infrastructure destroyed is that which allows for the poorer Lebanese to work and live. The destroyed Airport Bridge in Beirut is, more than anything else, a transport hub for people without private transport and a gateway to the southern suburbs of Beirut. Its destruction makes the people passing through it so much less mobile; and the people most frequently passing through, over and under the Airport Bridge, are overwhelmingly the poorer residents of Beirut. The destruction of entire Dahiya districts has also decimated hundreds of small businesses and put thousands of people out of work. The southern villages upon whom the wrath of the Israeli military was visited were already desperately poor and could hardly afford the cost of reconstruction in time, human effort, and money. Throughout the South, the Dahiya, and the Biqa’, Israeli bombardment has directly targeted Hizbullah kindergartens, schools, orphanages and clinics.51 These services were intended for the impoverished Shi’a communities that are by-and-large the Hizbullah constituency. Their obliteration further deprives this community of much needed social services.
In a sense, however, this war against the poor brings the Shi’a community closer than ever to the Palestinian refugees, whose own history is the story of impoverishment, marginalisation, and dispossession at the hands of the Israeli state and, later, the Lebanese elite. In fact, it is astonishing to hear some Lebanese elite repeat the same hostile rhetoric about the Shi’a as they did about the Palestinians, considering them non-Lebanese agents of foreign powers bent on destroying Lebanon. This hostile rhetoric wilfully ignores the deep class and confessional lines of fissure that run within the Lebanese society and whose realignments have led to the cycles of hostility and civil war over the last fifty years. The animus in such reactions stems not only from sectarian suspicions, but as importantly, from the sense of uncertainty that comes from physical mobility and social mobilisation of previously disempowered social groups. The enhanced visibility of the Shi’a populations today, their amplified urban presence, and their representation by an increasingly powerful political actor, Hizbullah, ignites the same sorts of anxieties that Palestinian social and political mobilisation in Lebanon did in the 1960s and 1970s. This same similarity of circumstance could potentially lead to a transformation of sentiments of solidarity between Palestinians and Hizbullah into concrete political organisation.
However, as with most things in Lebanon, a broad series of sociopolitical factors and a wide spectrum of international, regional, and local political actors introduce a complexity into the issue that would make any prediction hasty. Among the factors that could influence the Palestinians’ future in Lebanon are the precarious future of the Palestinian Authority in the Occupied Territories, the direction and role of Hizbullah in Lebanese politics, and the increased competition between US’s Arab allies in the region (namely Saudi, Egypt and Jordan) and Iran which may play itself out in the Lebanese political arena. As important is the possibility of another conflict as the Israeli cabinet teeters on the edge; imperilled Israeli governments have in the past recuperated their domestic support through waging wars against Palestinians and other regional adversaries. Undeniably, the only course of action that can be predicted with any certainty today is the large degree of uncertainty about the future of Palestinians in Lebanon, or indeed the future political landscape of Lebanon itself.
ENDNOTES
1 Rosemary Sayigh, Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (London, 1979), p. 104.
2 Personal interview with Umm Jamal, Burj al-Barajna camp, 4 March 2002.
3 Of more than a dozen Palestinian refugee camps, only two –Nahr al-Barid and Baddawi– are located in the predominantly Sunni northern Lebanon.
4 Rex Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival: The PLO in Lebanon (New York, 1990); Helena Cobban, Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power and Politics (Cambridge, 1984); Walid Khalidi, Conflict and Violence in Lebanon: Confrontation in the Middle East (Cambridge MA, 1983).
5 Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival, p. 136.
6 Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival, pp. 134-136; Rashid Khalidi, Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making during the 1982 War in Lebanon (New York, 1985), pp. 18-20.
7 Khalidi, Under Siege, p. 20.
8 Khalidi, Under Siege, pp. 114-115.
9 Bayan al-Hout, Sabra and Shatila, September 1982 (Ann Arbor, 1984).
10 Al-Hout, Sabra and Shatila, p. 85.
11 Al-Hout, Sabra and Shatila, p. 345.
12 Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival, p. 188; Elizabeth Picard, Lebanon, A Shattered Country: Myths and Realities of the Wars in Lebanon (New York, 2002), pp. 134-137.
13 On the War of the Camps, see Elaine C. Hagopian, Amal and the Palestinians: Understanding the Battle of the Camps (Washington DC, 1985) and Rosemary Sayigh, Too Many Enemies: the Palestinian Experience in Lebanon (London: Zed Books, 1984).
14 Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement 1949-1993 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 593-595.
15 Pauline Cutting, Children of the Siege (New York, 1989), p. 168; Sayigh, Armed Struggle, p. 591; Suzy Wighton, One Day at a Time: Diaries from a Palestinian Camp (London, 1991), p. 117; p. 138.
16 Khalidi, Under Siege, p. 88.
17 On Hizbullah see A. Nizar Hamzeh, In the Path of Hizbullah (Syracuse, 2004) and Augustus Richard Norton, Amal and the Shi’a: A Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon (Austin, 1987).
18 In one instance, on 13 February 1987, the driver of a vehicle attempting to deliver milk to the camps was shot dead. Nevertheless, on the same evening, Hizbullah activists once again attempted re-delivery of the supplies and were successful this time. See Cutting, Children of the Siege, p. 178.
19 The relationship between Palestinians and Hizbullah, however, is conducted on a number of different geographic and material terrains and as such is complicated by local politics, ideological solidarities, regional considerations, and the calculus of power. See my “‘Standing with My Brother’: Hizbullah, Palestinians, and the Limits of Solidarity” in Comparative Studies in Society and History (forthcoming 2007).
20 Simon Haddad, The Palestinian Impasse in Lebanon: The Politics of Refugee Integration (Sussex, 2004).
21 Under the terms of the Cairo Accords (1969) between the PLO and the Lebanese state, Palestinian refugees control the administration and security of their camps.
22 See Daniel Bernstein, “A Price of Fighting Terrorism” in Washington Post (10 August 2006), p. A23. On “pushing the PLO out of southern Lebanon” see The New York Times, 7 June, 1982, p. B1.
23 Maria Gonzalez-Ubeda, “From Flight to Relief: Palestine Refugees and the Cease-Fire” in UNRWA, http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/stories/CeaseFire.html accessed on 3 September, 2006.
24 See Dawud Ibrahim, “Mukhayyamat al-Laji’in al-Filastiniyin fin Lubnan Tatahawwal ila malaz l-Laji’in al-Lubnani” in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 24 July, 2006; Anthony Shadid, “Lebanese Families Find Shelter at Palestinian Camp” in Washington Post 25 July, 2006.
25 Shadid, “Lebanese Families Find Shelter”, p. A8.
26 Shadid, “Lebanese Families Find Shelter”, p. A8.
27 Maria Gonzalez-Ubeda, “From Flight to Relief”.
28 See Ferry Biedermann, “Role reversal as Palestinians give shelter to Shia refugees” in Financial Times, 5 August, 2006), p. 5.
29 Daniel Williams, “Lebanese, Displaced by Fighting, Find Refuge Among Palestinians” in Bloomberg, 14 August, 2006).
30 Biederman, “Role Reversal”, p. 5.
31 Ibrahim, “Mukhayyamat”.
32 URWA, “The Situation of Palestine Refugees in South Lebanon” in http://www.un.org/unrwa/news/releases/pr-2006/SouthLebSituation_Aug06.pdf accessed on 3 September, 2006.
33 UNRWA, “UNRWA Strongly Condemns the Killing of its Staff Member” in http://www.un.org/unrwa/news/releases/pr-2006/leb_15aug06.pdf accessed on 3 September, 2006.
34 AFP/AP/An-Nahar, “Morning Roundup: U.S. and France at Odds on Ending Conflict in Lebanon Where Body Count Continues to Rise” in Naharnet.com, 9 August, 2006), http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&F947AA5331390779C22571C50020EDA5 accessed 9 August 2006; Paula Zahn, “Transcript of Paula Zahn Now” in CNN, 8 August, 2006, http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0608/08/pzn.01.html accessed on 8 August 2006.
35 UNRWA, “UNRWA Delivers Aid to Camps in Southern Lebanon” in http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/stories/Sidon_aug06.html accessed on 3 September, 2006.
36 AFP/AP/An-Nahar, “Morning Roundup”.
37 Williams, “Lebanese, Displaed”; AFP, “Israeli jets attack refugee camp” in Agence-France-Presse, 13 August, 2006; UNRWA, “Refugee Stories: Thanks to UNRWA Staff for Keeping Services Up and Running throughout the Lebanon Conflict” in http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/stories/Grandi_leb_aug06.html accessed on 3 September, 2006.
38 UNRWA, “Refugee Stories”; UNRWA, “UNRWA Strongly Condemns”.
39 Personal interview with Umm Mahmud, Burj al-Barajna, 30 August, 2006.
40 Personal interview with Umm Walid, Burj al-Barajna, 30 August, 2006
41 See Rosemary Sayigh, “Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon:Implantation, Transfer or Return?” in Middle East Policy 8:1 (March 2001), pp. 94-105.
42 Indeed, in early 2005, the Palestinian president Abu Mazen controversially called for the refugees accepting citizenship in their countries of residence.
43 Alex, Klaushofer, “Lebanon Camps under Pressure” in BBC, 18 October, 2005, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4350816.stm accessed on 3 September 2006.
44 United Nations, “United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 – The Situation in the Middle East” at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/498/92/PDF/N0449892.pdf?OpenElement accessed 3 September, 2006
45 Three of the most devastating instances of violence recounted by Palestinians are the Tal al-Za’tar siege and massacre in 1975 (4,250 Palestinians killed); the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 (at least 1,200 refugees killed) and the War of the Camps between 1985 and 1988 (at least 5,000 people in several camps killed). For massacres as central historic events in the lives of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, see Laleh Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: the Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge, forthcoming).
46 Paul Moss, “Old Fears Haunt Lebanon Camps” in BBC, 26 March 2005, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4376545.stm accessed on 3 September, 2006.
47 Lin Noueihed, “UN does not expect Hizbollah to be disarmed by force” in Reuters, 16 August, 2006) at http://www.tiscali.co.uk/news/newswire.php/news/reuters/2006/03/26/world/un-does-not-expect-hizbollah-to-be-disarmed-by-force.html accessed on 3 September 2006; “Abbas Discusses Arms in Lebanon” in BBC, 18 October, 2006) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4354600.stm accessed on 3 September, 2006.
48 The same was true of audiences in the Arab world, where in a survey of Arab satellite channel viewers, IPSOS-STAT reported a jump in al-Manar ranking from number 83 in 2006 to number 10 in July and August, 2006. See Amir Mizroch, “Al-Manar TV soars into ratings ’Top 10’” in Jerusalem Post, 25 August, 2006.
49 Personal Interview with Abu Iskandar, Shatila camp, 30 August, 2006.
50 Personal interview with a Palestinian NGO administrator, Beirut, 5 September, 2006.
51 Max Rodenbeck, “War within War” in New York Review of Books 53:14, 21 September, 2006.