The siege of Nahr Al-Bared and the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.(Company overview)

INTRODUCTION

THE LEBANESE ARMY'S SIEGE OF THE Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, home to over 31,000 Palestinian refugees, initiated a second experience of displacement and exile within the community. Perhaps as troublesome as the displacement and loss of economic livelihood wrought on the Palestinian inhabitants of the camp was the inability of the Palestinian leadership to prevent such a rapid deterioration in the security of the camp. While conventional wisdom may blame Fatah al-Islam solely for the crisis, the Palestinian leadership and the Lebanese state are equally responsible for failing to ensure the security and safety of the Palestinian refugees. Public statements by the Palestinian leadership were initially supportive of the army's bombardment of the camp. Meanwhile, the Lebanese political establishment made very little effort to conceal its distrust of the refugees, essentially holding them responsible for the presence of Fatah al-Islam. With the Palestinian leadership providing cover, and the Lebanese political establishment in full support of the military's posturing around the camp, the initial conflict in Nahr al-Bared was to have inevitably disastrous effects on the Palestinian refugees who were left unprotected from the army's siege.

This article examines the factors that brought about this tragedy and begins to assess the long-term impact on Palestinian communities in Lebanon. It aims to critically engage with reconstruction plans and argue that these plans neglect the structural causes of violence towards Palestinians. Responses to the siege have tended to focus narrowly on the physical reconstruction of the Nahr al-Bared camp and its integration into the neoliberal economic landscape of Lebanon. However, neoliberal visions of the new camp's flourishing economy fail to include any discussion of a renewed political relationship between the Lebanese government and Palestinian leadership, a severe deficiency that points to the Palestinian's continued economic marginalization and a sustained denial of their civil rights in post-siege Lebanon.

Some prefatory notes on structure will prove helpful. First, the status of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will be discussed to highlight their exclusion from the international refugee protection regimes and the Lebanese domestic rights framework. This is followed by a rather descriptive discussion of the Nahr al-Bared camp and the Lebanese army's siege in the summer of 2007. Emphasis will be placed on the collapse of security within the camps and the failed attempts by the Palestinian leadership to protect the Palestinians. Third, the socio-economic impact of the siege on Palestinians will be evaluated based on preliminary data detailing housing and infrastructural damage, as well as labor outcomes. This will be followed by a discussion of the Master Plan, a conceived of reconstruction plan to rebuild the Nahr al-Bared camp. Finally, the paper will conclude with a critique of the proposed plan, arguing that unless Palestinians are integrated into the Lebanese rights framework they will continue to suffer from insecurity in Lebanon and remain vulnerable to physical attacks and further displacement.

THE STATUS OF PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN LEBANON

This section focuses on the legal status of Palestinian refugees both in international and Lebanese domestic law. There exists a legal lacuna (Akram 2002) that sets Palestinian refugees apart from other refugees, a gap that is caused by Palestinian exclusion from the rights of refugees as guaranteed by the 1951 Refugee Convention and the international regime for refugee protection. According to Akram (2002) the Refugee Convention attempted to frame the issue of refugees and state-less persons as an international, rather than a domestic or regional, problem.

As such, it sought to guarantee protections and rights for refugees through ensuring that host states would grant refugees a number of rights, including freedom of religion, property rights, freedom from undue restrictions on unemployment, and rights to education and health. It also made provisions for more permanent forms of relief such as residence and citizenship. The instruments of the international regime were meant to guarantee the fundamental rights of refugees and state-less persons in host countries.