As Burdens Grow, UNRWA Lebanon Budget Imperiled

By Ghada Khouri

In the absence of social and civil rights under Lebanese law, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are largely dependent on UNRWA as the main provider of education, social and health services. UNRWA runs 25 clinics and 73 schools in Lebanon. Its budget increased by 70 percent from $32 million in 1993 to $55 million in 1997, thus dashing speculation that the peace process would soon lead to the agency’s dissolution. In addition to providing basic services to the refugees, UNRWA also acts as an employer. About 99 percent of its 2,400 employees in Lebanon are Palestinians.

Despite its undeniable role in alleviating the hardships of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has been unable to meet their mounting needs satisfactorily—largely due to a limited budget dependent on voluntary contributions from U.N. member states, the largest donors being the United States, the European Union and Japan. With a $20 million overall deficit for 1997, UNRWA launched a special emergency appeal to donor states last July and announced a series of austerity measures, including the imposition of tuition fees in all UNRWA schools. The proposed service cuts led to a 9-day hunger strike outside UNRWA headquarters in Beirut, which ended when the donor countries agreed to cover the agency’s deficit during an emergency meeting in Amman on Sept. 9, 1997. Although this year’s storm has passed, UNRWA’s financial troubles are chronic. UNRWA’s director in Lebanon, Lionel Brisson, announced that the agency plans to seek a $5.3 million increase in its Lebanon budget for next year.

“The perfect solution is to give the Palestinians everything they need, but we simply can’t do it because of budget constraints,” said UNRWA spokesperson Hoda Samra. “UNRWA is already doing more than its mandate requires in Lebanon because of the special needs of Palestinians on the ground. For example, it is not within our mandate to provide secondary school education or hospitalization, but we are doing it only in Lebanon.”

Indeed, UNRWA recently opened one secondary school and provides hospital care through contractual arrangements with 12 private hospitals. However, in 7 percent of the cases, including cancer treatment and brain or open heart surgery, UNRWA only covers a portion of the costs—usually less than half—on a case-by-case basis, according to Samra. Few Palestinians are able to pay the remaining costs of these life-saving operations. “No one deserves to die,” Samra said. “But the costs of these operations is very high. If we have to choose between covering 93 percent of hospitalization cases and covering a mere 7 percent of very expensive cases, we have to opt for the first choice.”

UNRWA’s limits on spending have created resentment among those Palestinians who have felt the brunt of the agency’s belt-tightening approach to providing services.

“Opting for the First Choice”

Samir Khalil, a father of four in Shatila camp, is still angry that his 12-year-old daughter, who suffered first-degree burns during the “war of the camps” against Amal militiamen, was denied hospitalization by UNRWA. “I have been running around for years trying to get help for my daughter, who is badly disfigured from the burns she suffered, but no one would help,” he said. Reconstructive surgery is an expensive procedure which apparently falls under the 7 percent of hospitalization requests that are either rejected or partially covered by UNRWA. “Our conditions here are miserable,” Khalil added. “There are constant water and electricity shortages, and no way of making enough money to provide a decent life for our families. We are pawns and our fate is determined by how much money UNRWA receives.”

Pressures on UNRWA rose sharply after the Gulf war, when remittances from Palestinians in the Gulf stopped coming in and when some of those expelled from various Gulf countries returned to life in the camps. While the future of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon remains uncertain, one thing is for sure—“as long as the Palestinian refugee problem is here, we are here,” Samra asserted. “We will be here until a final solution is reached.”

Such a solution seems as far off today as it was five years ago. The refugee problem remains one of the thorniest issues to be addressed in final negotiations, which are nowhere in sight. Most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are opposed to the Oslo accords because they feel that their rights were signed away. “No one has the right to deny us what we deserve, and that is to return to our homes in Palestine,” said Abou Fadi Hammad, a Fatah dissident and a camp leader residing in Mar Elias. Hammad, who represents a rejectionist faction, sees the future as “moving us closer and closer to conflict.” The Turkish-Israeli military alliance, a steady media campaign by U.S. officials demonizing Syria and Iran, intensified Israeli attacks against Lebanon, as well as continued settlement-building activity and collective punishment measures against the Palestinians, are indicative of increased tensions. Whether these tensions translate into military confrontation or U.S. and European pressures on Israel to abandon its provocative policies remains to be seen.

In any case, the Palestinian refugees want their plight to play a central role in any final outcome. “Whether in war or in peace, we are Palestinians and Palestine is our destiny,” Hammad said. “We did not come here of our own free will. We came to escape massacres at the hands of the Zionists…We do not intend to permanently settle in Lebanon, but if there is no return, are we to continue living in abysmal conditions? It’s a crime.”

Ghada Khouri is a free-lance writer on Middle East issues based in Washington, DC.