The Ongoing Nakba: Palestinian Refugees from Syria in Lebanon

New Article Submission

Thank you for your interest in Jadaliyya. We welcome all submissions. The most significant requirement is for Jadaliyya submissions to be analytically compelling and offer a perspective or argument that has not been covered at length either on Jadaliyya or elsewhere. Because of the volume of submissions, well-written pieces are prioritized. Length is flexible, 1000 to 2500 words is the average range. However, we will accept longer pieces. Once submitted, several members of the editorial committee will review your piece and one of them will inform you of the decision.
Author Details
Article Details
Select Countries
Select Keywords
Select Topics
Only RTF, Word, and Pages documents accepted.

Recommended image size: 762x800 px

Location of each image should be indicated in the text of the article via a square bracket caption that includes: (1) a description of the image; (2) the photographer/designer and source of the image. Please note we only use images you as the author have the right to use, which usually means those of your own creation or those published under Creative Commons. Alternatively, you need specific permission from the copyright holder.
Please read the Release Form and provide an electronic signature [your full name] below to confirm that you accept its terms
Required
Hyperlink words in your article if they refer to links on the internet. We encourage more, rather than less, links (try to avoid footnotes—embed them as hyperlinks if possible)

Article added successfully.

Pages Menu BETA
Dec 26, 2013 Palestine-Israel
[Image by NISCVT.] [Image by NISCVT.]

The Ongoing Nakba: Palestinian Refugees from Syria in Lebanon

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following report was issued by the The National Institute of Social Care & Vocational Training (NISCVT)]

Since the start of the Syrian uprising, Palestinian refugees from Syria (PRS) have attempted to remain relatively neutral in the conflict. However, as the conflict escalated both surrounding and within Yarmouk refugee camp in the Damascus suburbs, Palestinian refugees have become increasingly impacted. Between December 2012 and January 2013, a steady and growing flow of PRS began seeking refuge in Lebanon and now the country is host to over 30,000 PRS (ANERA). Additionally these approximate figures are expected to be higher than reported as many have yet to be registered.

Lebanon is already host to approximately 440,000 Palestinian refugees, who were exiled during the 1948 Nakba, and subsequent wars and massacres. Moreover Lebanon is also currently host to an estimatedone million Syrian refugees. Within this context, PRS are particularly vulnerable due to the lack of support they receive from both national and international organizations. Unlike Syrian refugees who receive assistance from UNHCR and a plethora of other organizations, all of whose efforts have yet to fully meet the needs of the overwhelming Syrian refugee population in Lebanon, PRS only receive assistance from UNRWA, according to UN mandates, and a limited number of other NGOs. Even preceding the Syrian refugee crisis, UNRWA was severely under-funded and has had difficulty meeting the basic needs of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Moreover, UNRWA resources and facilities are inadequate and unable to absorb the influx of these additional refugees. Thus, the limited and scarce resources available to PRS in Lebanon place them in a particularly vulnerable situation. While local NGOs try to complement UNRWA’s services, they too are chronically underfunded.

\"\"
[Image by NISCVT.]

Palestinian refugees from Syria are now refugees for the second or third time in their lives; in some cases more. After the 1948 exile of Palestinians from their homeland, in what is termed al Nakba, or Catastrophe, Palestinians were forced to seek refuge in neighboring Arab countries such as Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Others were internally displaced to other regions of Palestine. What was expected to be a temporary displacement has resulted in an over 65 year occupation of their homeland. While Palestinian refugees under international law have a legal right to return to their homeland, as are all refugee populations, they have been consistently denied this right; with the international community failing to effectively advocate on their behalf. This makes the Palestinian refugee crisis the longest-lasting refugee crisis, creating the single largest refugee population in modern times.

\"\"
[Image by NISCVT.]

The substantial influx of refugees, particularly in Lebanon’s most impoverished areas, has had a profound affect on the financial situation of both poor Lebanese nationals as well as an even more profound negative impact on the Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, as well as the poor Lebanese have been driven into greater poverty and unemployment, since Syrian refugees are accepting jobs for lower wages. Due to the increased labor supply, employers have been able to demand more work for less pay and have even dismissed local staff in favor of refugees who are willing to work for less. For Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who are prohibited from working in over 72 professions, the effect has been devastating. Many manual labor and black market jobs have been filled by Syrian refugees or PRS. According to a recent ANERA needs-assessment report, this has made PRS “the most vulnerable sub-population affected by the crisis. PRS have fewer legal protections than other communities, no legal employment possibilities, and are mostly to be lodged with the poorest host communities in Lebanon. Furthermore, the international response to their particular needs has been markedly less than for the general Syrian refugee.”

\"\"
[Image by NISCVT.]

PRS have primarily sought housing in the scattered 12 refugee camps of Lebanon, many of which are already overcrowded. Many live in substandard conditions in shelters such as garages, shacks, shops, and public buildings, with as many as 10-15 persons living in a single quarter. Moreover, many PRS lack the most basic facilities such as refrigerators, electricity, and access to running water. Some do not even have toilets or bathrooms in their living quarters, forcing them to use public lavatories or the bathrooms of their neighbors. These harsh living circumstances will only worsen during the cold and wet winter months. There is a desperate need to increase efforts to support PRS in Lebanon for the winter season.

\"\"
[Image by NISCVT.]

Lebanon has faced one of the coldest winters in over 100 years and it is only the beginning. Organizations in Lebanon are rapidly trying to meet the needs of the refugee population by providing winter items, including heaters, blankets and winter clothing. Unfortunately, since PRS do not benefit from the services of most international and local organizations in Lebanon, they are left particularly vulnerable and will not have access to the basic resources necessary to keep their families warm and secure. Only a handful of organizations are specifically targeting PRS families, however, they are unable to cover even a fraction of the needs and reach only a limited number of families. Some organizations have initiated creative fundraising campaigns to fill the gaps, such as the National Institute of Social Care and Vocational Training (NISCVT), more commonly known as Beit Atfal Assumoud (BAS). The NISCVT is a Palestinian-run Lebanese NGO operating in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon. Established primarily as an orphanage for orphans of the Taal el Zaater massacre, NISCVT now operates community centers in all 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Acting primarily as a kindergarten, and early education center, NISCVT also provides a plethora of youth and community based activities, as well as social relief services. NISCVT’s existence is a reminder of the ongoing nature of al Nakba.

As PRS families struggle to survive the winter months, aid organizations are also struggling to meet the high needs of the refugee community. While the international donor community neglects PRS, organizations hope the international community may hear their calls and support PRS this winter, for the worse is yet to come. 
Tags

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      The entire globe stands behind Israel as it faces its most intractable existential crisis since it started its slow-motion Genocide in 1948. People of conscience the world over are in tears as Israel has completely run out of morals and laws to violate during its current faster-paced Genocide in Gaza. Israelis, state and society, feel helpless, like sitting ducks, as they search and scramble for an inkling of hope that they might find one more human value to desecrate, but, alas, their efforts remain futile. They have covered their grounds impeccably and now have to face the music. This is an emergency call for immediate global solidarity with Israel’s quest far a lot more annihilation. Please lend a helping limb.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      In this episode, Mandy Turner discusses the vital role think tanks play in the policy process, and in manufacturing consent for government policy. Turner recently published a landmark study of leading Western think tanks and their positions on Israel and Palestine, tracing pronounced pro-Israel bias, where the the key role is primarily the work of senior staff within these institutions, the so-called “gatekeepers.”

    • Long Form Podcast: Our Next Three Episodes

      Long Form Podcast: Our Next Three Episodes
      Long Form Podcast(Episodes 7, 8, & 9) Upcoming Guests:Mandy TurnerHala RharritHatem Bazian Hosts:Mouin RabbaniBassam Haddad   Watch Here:Youtube.com/JadaliyyaX.com/Jadaliyya There can be
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412