Progress Toward Statehood Tightens Noose Around Palestinians in Lebanon

By Stephen J. Sosebee

Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were met with deep anger among the nearly half-million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Popular committees in the refugee camps organized strikes on election day in protest of what most feel is a "sell-out" by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat of their fundamental right to return to their homes and villages in pre-1948 Israel/Palestine. Though there were no large-scale demonstrations or tire burnings as in the past, shops and schools closed in most of Lebanon's 12 squalid refugee camps on election day. Palestinians here feel that the movement for peace in the Middle East is passing them by.

"The Palestinians in Lebanon carried the revolution while our brothers in the occupied territories slept. We sacrificed everything and now Abu Ammar uses our blood to make himself an autonomous kingdom," says Hajj Aladeen of Shatila camp in Beirut. "We did not know that when the PLO was evacuated from Lebanon in 1982, it meant that they were also abandoning us here as well."

The frustration that most Palestinians in Lebanon now express is no longer directed just at Israel, which forced them off their land in 1948, or at other foreign powers like Syria or the United States, which have also played a role in their oppression. Palestinians increasingly voice their anger at their own traditional leaders who have returned to Palestine without them.

"I am not alone to say that I no longer trust the PLO to address our basic needs as a people without a state," says Akram Muhamed, an UNRWA employee in Tyre. "Our own leaders have sacrificed our right of return for autonomy. We feel forgotten and abandoned."

Palestinians in Lebanon may feel as though the elections in the West Bank and Gaza indicate that they are the excluded party in the "peace process." But the Lebanese government is not so quick to forget that there still is a large stateless population on its land. "As the Palestinians themselves have their own authority on their own land, we cannot accept the permanent settlement of a half million refugees on our land," stated Lebanese President Elias Hrawi recently. Palestinian refugee camps stand in the way of Lebanon's impressive economic and political reconstruction. Beirut's new sports city, for example, is being constructed nearly on top of Shatila Refugee Camp.

President Hrawi's statement underlines a growing tension between the government of Beirut and Palestinian refugees. In addition to increasing statements by Lebanese officials about unilaterally moving the refugees out of Beirut, or, better yet, sending them back to Palestine, a military standoff has evolved on the ground.

Palestinian refugee camps stand in the way of Lebanon's reconstruction.

On election day in Palestine, the army already had surrounded and sealed the Ein el-Hilwa refugee camp in Sidon. The objective was the arrest of a renegade known as Abu Meh'jil. While not affiliated with any Palestinian faction, this Islamic fighter is being sought by a Lebanese court for the recent ambush killing of Sheikh Nizar El-Halabi, a Lebanese religious leader. Though the motive for the killing, and whether Abu Meh'jil is the actual perpetrator, are still unclear, the Lebanese authorities seem determined to catch the Palestinian and his followers.

"Abu Meh'jil represents a new generation of Palestinian in Lebanon," explains Tarek Musa from Ein el-Hilwa camp. "He is a religious man who is not tainted by being affiliated with one of the PLO factions." A day before the elections in Palestine, PLO leader Arafat entered into the standoff by seemingly backing the Lebanese military. "The Lebanese army has the right to exercise its prerogative across the whole of the national territory, including inside the camps," Arafat told a Lebanese paper.

This is not consistent with the agreement that Arafat signed with the Lebanese government in 1969 in which the Lebanese authorities agreed not to enter Palestinian refugee camps, where the Palestinians themselves would maintain security. Though Beirut unilaterally tore up these accords in 1987, the Lebanese government has yet to send troops into Palestinian refugee camps.

A Rallying Point

Not all Palestinians agree with the strict Islamic standards enforced by Abu Meh'jil's followers in the camp, and many feel a 27-year-old is not mature enough to lead a people as politically evolved as the Palestinians in Lebanon. Most rally around the fighter, however, when it comes to potentially heavy-handed methods of removing him from the camp by the Lebanese army. "Abu Meh'jil has only 60 armed followers in the camp," says Mohammed Habib of Meih Meih refugee camp overlooking Sidon. "But there are over 400 guns in that camp and the majority will be used to resist an assault should the Lebanese army try to enter Ein el-Hilwa to arrest Abu Meh'jil."

Arafat backing the Lebanese government against his own people may be unprecedented, but the checkpoints and tanks surrounding the camp of 75,000 refugees is not a new situation for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. "We are used to such conditions," explains an elderly man collecting water with his grandchildren in the center of the camp. "The Israelis attacked us and occupied us for many years. The Syrians also have besieged us and we had a terrible war with the Shi'i here not too long ago. This is just a continuation of the Palestinian situation."

Though Arafat seemingly gave the Lebanese a green light to enter Ein Al-Hilwa, many feel that the Lebanese are not ready to use force. They believe this is just a Lebanese government effort to put pressure on the Palestinians and to remind them that whatever future they have must be outside war-torn Lebanon.

Diplomats are falling over each other to proclaim that peace in the Middle East is progressing. The massing of Lebanese forces around Ein El-Hilwa refugee camp in Sidon, however, underscores that while Palestinians have begun the democratic process in Palestine, things are not so bright for some of the many Palestinian refugees still shut out of their homeland. Until all Palestinians somehow are accommodated into the Oslo accords, predictions of a lasting peace in the Middle East may be premature.

Stephen J. Sosebee, a free-lance journalist, divides his time between the U.S. and Israel/Palestine.