Return, Fail, Repeat: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

Return, Fail, Repeat: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

Return, Fail, Repeat: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

By : Mohamad-Ali Nayel محمد علي نايل

Not Just Another Day

On the morning of the second Sunday of May 2011, Beirut was sluggishly waking up. Nothing seemed unusual or special, apart from some intruding grey clouds leftover from the harsh winter of that year. Clouds or not, it was a warm spring weekend where the most pressing issue for Beirutis was to get their shopping done before noon for a grand Sunday lunch.

Elsewhere, on the margins of Lebanon’s reality, in concealed pockets known as Palestinian refugee camps, the date 15 May 2011 was not just another lazy Sunday. At gathering points around each camp, Palestinian refugees packed lunch baskets, got dressed in their finest fashion, and decided that on that day, everyone would sport the same colors. Palestinians of all ages held flags of Palestine as they hopped into buses and readied themselves for a day that had been months in the making. Some called it a picnic at the Maroun al-Ras park in south Lebanon, but the majority of those riders called it the Day of Return.

Thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon across twelve refugee camps, and many “informal gatherings”, moved in sync with their brethren in camps in Damascus and Amman on 15 May 2011. Buses were packed with Palestinians as they rolled in one direction. Their destination: Palestine.

I woke up early that day, disturbed by a brutal headache from revelry the night before, where some of us had gathered at a street corner, chatting till dawn, intoxicated and euphoric about the return on which we were about to embark. This, however, didn’t stop me from getting ready to join the bus I was assigned to catch by Mar Elias camp on the outskirts of Beirut. Before I left my apartment I made sure my red kuffiya was wrapped around my neck. To remedy the monstrous hangover, I chugged a substantial amount of coffee then ran out to catch the return buses heading south.

There were no signs or hints in Beirut on that Sunday morning that would indicate the grand day of return that was being thoroughly organized and put into action. Outside Mar Elias camp, there was eight buses and a sea of people that would require at least eight more buses. The organizers didn’t expect the turnout to be so disproportionate to their plans. Buses filled with their maximum capacity started to drive away, many of us fidgeting with anxiety fearing there wouldn't be any spaces left for us to ride and we might get left behind. More buses arrived and I quickly slipped in to reserve my seat. As I sat down and looked around I remarked that this bus was a mixed basket - my ears registered so many different Arabic dialects. There were not just Palestinians, but Bahrainis, Yemenis, Syrians, Egyptians and some Lebanese. Everyone became a Palestinian going home. A home we had never been able to inhabit physically; rather it was constructed lavishly in our collective memory and forever rooted deeply in our collective unconscious.

The bus driver was playing a mix-tape of revolutionary songs from the '80s mixed with oldies from the time of the Grand Palestinian revolution. The sound system blasted on. Some energetic morning-people shouted their singing over the system and I personally wished I had an Arab-Rap mix-tape on me. It was the first half of 2011, a time when Arab Rap emerged to become the genre of the Arab revolutions that were raging in the region all around Palestine. Inside the bus, a buzz ensued; intense conversation bounced backward, forward, and side-to-side, people getting to know each other, and imagining how it was going to be once we reached the border.

On the wide highway between Saida and Sur return buses raced, honked horns, and people flashed victory signs and waved flags out of the windows. Each time one bus zoomed by another, young Palestinian boys and girls flashed their best smiles, joyful eyes met and locked, conversing without words they said, “Yes! This is finally happening we are going back home, fuck the camps!” When we reached the final road that leads to the border, our bus slowed down. All we could see ahead of us was a long chain of bumper-to-bumper buses moving sluggishly. It was now one o’clock, the southern sun above us was blazing and there was no way people would be confined inside these buses. Impatiently people started pouring out of their buses to the green fields dotted by yellow daisies. We followed suit, one by one hopping out of our bus and trailing behind a long human chain that went down the valley then up the hill, walking through narrow streets of southern border villages until we reached the hill overlooking Palestine.   

While trailing up the hill brushing through wildflowers and daisies I slowed my pace at one point to listen to an old Palestinian man leaning on a cane. He was walking with his grandson, no older than 10, and telling him the story of the time he was forced out of Palestine and had to carry his nine-year-old sister while escaping to Lebanon over these very same mountains and paths. The old man spoke to his grandson of the beauty of Palestine and described how their home looked. This same story that became the Palestinian Nakba was retold throughout the march to the border that day. Finally, as we gradually drew closer to the border, he told the young boy, “Soon you will go and see Palestine, the most beautiful country I have ever seen. It’s where we come from. It’s our land.”

Home In Plain Sight

The moment we reached the final point of our destination on Maroun al-Ras a sea of people flooded the hill overlooking Palestine. Group selfies were snapped with Palestine in the background; with each new photo, more people joined the frame. What caught my attention was the river of people trickling down the steep hill pouring all the way to the dividing fence. The day of return, according to the organizers, was supposed to be limited to the premises of the park on the hill overlooking Palestine.

I joined that stream at the steep hill, thinking it was a crazy, dangerous descent. Around me I saw Palestinians of old age holding hands, determined while descending cautiously. At the sight of teenage boys and girls running down that slope showing no signs of hesitation, my body got over its inhibitions and pressed on ahead. At the separating fence, the whole idea of a symbolic activity of gathering at the border turned into a notion that had felt impossible up until that moment of confrontation with our homeland. Return became a real possibility. The whole idea of having to wait until the UN or the world would grant us “permission” to fulfill our right of return ended right then and there. Return to Palestine went from an imaginative “one-day we will go back” idea to a realistic feasible possibility that could be organized directly. With the homeland in sight, many people realized that return only seems impossible until it’s done.

And the return started to take place as the youngest went to the fence and started climbing it amongst shouts and screams of the roughly 2,000 people raging against the taunting Israeli soldiers on the other side. The crowd at the fence were struck by a multitude of emotions: the elders remembered, reminisced, and cried for being kept away for home for too long, and the young saw home for the first time. Some were petrified, others dumbfounded by how close home was. The bus drive had been only two hours away but how far it had felt from within the oppressive camps.

Clack clack. The sound bounced and echoed around us resulting in a momentary calm that shattered all the previous emotion and sentimentality. A moment later a body dropped to the ground, blood staining his shirt.  He is not moving… “shaheed shaheed, [martyr]” came in roars: people went mad. A young boy from ‘Ain al-Hilwa camp next to the fence succumbed to the ground, the bullets of an Israeli sniper from the other side of the fence killed him instantly. I was about three hundred meters away from the fence when the first of six martyrs was killed on that day. As I took a minute to grasp what just happened I saw a pack of shirtless men surging out of the crowd and galloping in my direction, between them was a flimsy body soaked in blood. “Shaheed shaheed! Move out of the way,” they shouted as they carried him up to the paramedics stationed on the hill.

This system, the UN, UNRWA, the international community, call it what you want, was never meant to protect us or stop the occupation of our land and grant us justice by granting us our right of return.

The murder of this young returnee charged the whole scene. The Israeli way of murdering unarmed Palestinians provoked everyone into a fit of rage; the trickling stream of people coming down the hill turned into a furious river once the news reached the hill. The youngest ones at the fence were triggered, tossing volleys across the border, and using anything that could be found on the ground: gravel, stones, pieces of dry wood, and even when there was nothing to be found someone took off their shoes, aimed, and shot it across the fence. In the middle of this chaos, someone found a landmine and started digging around it to unearth it. At the sight of this weapon, more boys joined in digging it out with their bare hands. The landmine covered by rust was a relic left deep in the ground from times of Israeli occupation of south Lebanon. The angry young ones continued ravaging the earth, digging out the landmine, until stopped by others.

The 15 of May 2011 was a day that ended with blood. Six young Palestinians were murdered by Israeli snipers. That historic day would have lasted if it wasn’t for the Lebanese army forcefully ending it by shooting thousands of rounds above our heads scaring people to flee in a frenzy. On that day, the way to return to Palestine was demonstrated. People realized that this is how we’ll return, but most of all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon became fully convinced that there is no alternative to the inhumane life in the camps but the right of return. Going back to the camps after that day was a massive anti-climax; Palestine was in sight, home was felt, touched, seen, and smelled for the first time by a whole new generation who, since they were born, were breastfed the meaning of home, their imagination nourished by stories about the beauty of life in the villages and cities. This is the generation that experiences the calamity of displacement at every sunrise and spends sleepless nights shedding tears for the brutal injustices they endure, caused by the Nakba that started seventy years ago and hasn’t ever stopped.

In the weeks and months that followed, Palestinians buried their new martyrs and went into mourning again. In every camp, the possibility of return that they experienced on that day was told: reminisced and retold, retracing every detail of it. People finally concluded that it was a day that must be repeated, that their return and how it will happen is now lucid, imaginable, foreseeable, and inevitable.  

I recently had a conversation with few friends from the Shatila refugee camp and I asked them if they still remember that day on the border and how much worse life has become in the last seven years in the camps. They told me, “We’ve stopped expecting anything that we could count on to further our cause or make our lives better from a system that has continuously failed us. This system, the UN, UNRWA, the international community, call it what you want, was never meant to protect us or stop the occupation of our land and grant us justice by granting us our right of return. When we return it’s going to be exactly as we did it in 2011: it’s going to be us Palestinians finding the right moment to leave these camps once and for all and go home. We must learn from our people in Gaza, how they are plotting their return and getting ready for when our turn will come.”

The Great Return March

Today, Palestinians besieged inside the Gaza strip are pushing for their right of return to the forefront, and with this, they are galvanizing the crushed souls of their brethren scattered in refugee camps around Palestine. The raging Palestinians in Gaza are sowing hope in a moment of history where hope seems irrational for people who have been deprived from justice while forcefully being kept out of their home for 70 years. It is also a moment in history for the Israeli occupation system to be aware of - the fact that the life they have built on the agony of the colonized Palestinians is now losing its assurance.

For at least seventy years, the Israeli colonization of Palestine has avoided no extremist tactic, be it terror or torture, but instead of being subjugated to this injustice, Palestinians have regrouped and revamped continuously. As the martyr Bassel Al-Araj has remarked, Palestinians have simultaneously identified a single enemy even as they are now besieged and forcibly dispersed, they still find in suffering a spiritual community that will give birth to yet another bastion of the Palestinian intifada. This is happening now!

The Great Return March is a forty-five-day protest along the border between Gaza and Israel. It began on 30 March, Land Day, which commemorates the 1976 killings of six Palestinians by Israel who had been protesting land confiscations, and ends on 15 May, the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, the mass displacement, ethnic cleansing and occupation of Palestine during the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel.

While we scroll through our social media timelines we must pay attention to how Palestinians have been getting maimed and killed by Israeli soldiers, to witness how Israel is setting another precedent in murder and impunity while testing/marketing weapons and crowd control tactics. As of writing this, Israeli soldiers have killed 50 unarmed Palestinian protesters and not one Israeli has been killed or injured since March 30 2018. Five of those killed were children and two were journalists. Israeli sharpshooters fatally injured the vast majority of participants in protests. According to MSF, the unusual severe gunshot injuries, “...where the bullet has literally destroyed tissue after having pulverized the bone...” leaves most of these patients with “disabilities for life.” A method that Israel uses to stop people from protesting: you could be next.

Therefore, a terrifying murder style by Israel must be looked at closely to understand the method behind the kind of deliberate wounds inflicted on unarmed protesters in Gaza by Israeli soldiers. Such crowd control tactics will soon be deployed against other populations by their own governments, since Israel has been training the police forces of various countries from Asia, Europe, and America. Consequently, the Palestinian struggle for liberation becomes universal, again mediated through the bodies of Palestinians that, at this stage, function for experimenting new weapons and subjugation tactics to be exported by a predatory state to whichever regime is trying to contain their angry populations.

We must take note of how Israel continues to kill fathers, arrest mothers, and fragment families, resulting in scattered and innumerable orphans. Human beings at the start of their life are hit by a disturbing shock to their psyche when they become orphaned by military occupation forces and tend to develop a grim prospect about the meaning of life. In their quest to answer the why of what befell them, their life becomes centered on a daily struggle against their oppressors, so they remedy their bruised souls with a commitment to vengeance. Here our collective memory supplies us with many inspiring stories about orphans that grew up and rebelled against the oppression around them. Stories that stretch back all the way to ‘Issa the son of Mariam, to Mohamad, the prophet, to the revolutionary Husayn, his grandson, to al-Qassam, to Dalal al-Mughrabi, to now Bassel al-Araj and Amed Jarar, and many more tales of local heroes that inspire and indicate the way. This orphan turned hero is born again with each generation that has lived under Israeli occupation for more than seventy years. These children that Israel deprived of their childhood and innocence are yet another generation of a long series of resistance fighters. Like that day of return that took place seven years ago today, the Great Return March in besieged Gaza is another attempt in this ongoing anti-colonialist struggle that will be repeated again and again until justice and the return home are realized.

Lebanon: Nationalist Stimulation, Syrian Dehumanization

During a misty summer dawn, on Friday 30 June 2017, Lebanese Army Forces (LAF) troops—reinforced with several tanks—stormed two Syrian refugee camps located on the outskirts of Arsal, in northeast Lebanon. The first, al-Nour Camp, is located in Jafar. The second, Qara, is located in Wadi al-Hosn. That dawn, LAF soldiers took their positions surrounding each of the camps and waited for the zero hour. Once the time came, around six o’clock in the morning, the troops began moving into the camps. As the soldiers combed through the tents that made up the refugee camps, they came under attack from unidentified armed men. According to reports, the armed men who shot at the LAF soldiers were affiliated with either Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formally known as Jabhat al-Nusra) and the Islamic State—both sets of whom infiltrated the camps. Seven LAF soldiers were wounded and another was killed during these military raids.

Details Emerge

Those Syrian refugees that remained in Arsal, continue to be terrified by random arrests. Many of them spend their nights in hiding on side roads and in between graves of the village’s main cemetery.
Human beings at the start of their life are hit by a disturbing shock to their psyche when they become orphaned by military occupation forces and tend to develop a grim prospect about the meaning of life.

During the clashes between the army and gunmen, the troops continued to comb the tents. In some instances, they tossed hand grenades into tents—resulting in severe human casualties and material damage. By the end, the LAF had demolished approximately thirty housing units in the camp, while damaging dozens of other housing units and killing nineteen people. According to local sources, “it was the army that launched an attack using heavy weapons that caused one wall to fall on a girl, killing her, and another that killed a handicapped man—whose corpse was confiscated and handed back for burial days later.” After the battle was over the army arrested 356 Syrian men. Several estimates put the number of people injured during the raid at over three hundred. According to both Lebanese and Syrian sources on the ground in Arsal, there were no suicide bombers during the raid.

Yet the above details were not necessarily those announced by the LAF in its communications with the public in general and the media in particular. According to Reuters, the LAF claimed “five suicide bombers attacked Lebanese soldiers as they raided two Syrian refugee camps in Arsal at the border with Syria.” The news agency went on to report that the LAF “said seven soldiers were wounded and a girl was killed after one of the suicide bombers blew himself up in the midst of a family of refugees. It did not elaborate.” To Syrians, and some Lebanese, this particular set of raids was considered a most brutal military operation against the most destitute Syrian refugees in Lebanon. More importantly, the events ushered the beginning of a new manufactured discourse about the LAF, Syrian refugees, and alleged terrorist threats.

Following the raids, images circulated on social media showing hundreds of Syrian men handcuffed. Most were topless, tagged with spray paint on the backs of their naked bodies. Many of these Syrian bodies show signs of recent severe beatings. Some of the residents of the two camps managed to escape to other neighboring camps. Many others were detained by the LAF. As the day came to an end, a hashtag in support of the LAF began trending across social media: #Purge_the_hills of_Irsal.

In the days that followed the raids, the living conditions Syrians in their ransacked camps deteriorated to a point beyond the capacity of local relief organizations to address. Remarkably, the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR)—which is the international body tasked with overseeing assistance to Syrian refugees and which has facilitated the establishment of several camps around Arsal—was absent and provided no protection to refugees during this disaster. In the weeks that followed the raids, thousands of Syrian refugees in Arsal returned to Syria as a function of the deteriorating conditions. It merits considering the fact that the situation deteriorated so much in Arsal that these refugees preferred to return to what they had originally fled from in Syria. Those Syrian refugees that remained in Arsal, continue to be terrified by random arrests. Many of them spend their nights in hiding on side roads and in between graves of the village’s main cemetery.

Framing the Narrative

As the dust settled on that day of the raids, there appeared to be two very different yet complimentary operations at play. The first was a military operation to “cleanse” the camps from the alleged presence and threat of dangerous militants. The second was public relations campaign to establish hegemony over how the raids were represented, which include celebrating the idea and concept of “cleansing.” Despite initial confusion by residents of the camps and those that followed the conflicting news that emerged, the end of the day featured a specific set of facts and framing of the facts that dominated the public sphere. There were now two narratives of what transpired: one that was fed to and disseminated by Lebanese media outlets; and another that was only whispered among those left alive in Arsal.

The production of the official narrative of what transpired in Arsal was very clearly intended to compliment the military operation from the start. The Lebanese minister of defense was quoted as saying the “incident showed the importance of tackling the refugee crisis – Lebanon is hosting over 1 million refugees – and vindicated a policy of ‘pre-emptive strikes’ against militant sleeper cells.” The crucial question that remains unanswered is how was brutalizing the bodies of Syrian refugees supposed to solve the refugee crisis?

In the Beqaa Valley, three refugee camps were burned down in the day immediately following the raids in Arsal. The fires killed at least three people and left hundreds homeless (or tentless) with severe burn injuries. There were conflicting reasons for the alleged arsons that began to spread. The inhabitants of the camps insisted that there were unknown assailants who set fire to the camps. They also claim that the nearby local police did not take their pleas seriously when reporting the men or the fires. Alternatively, the mainstream media reported that the reasons for the arson remained unknown. Some hinted that the cause of fires was high summer temperatures. Furthermore, the army raided refugee encampments in different areas of Beqaa, detaining many Syrians for entering Lebanon illegally or not having residency permits.

Destroying the Evidence

It was not enough for officials to frame the narrative and feed it to local and international media outlets. They went so far as to destroy evidence which contradicted their narrative. Diala Shehadeh is a lawyer representing families of the Syrian men who the LAF arrested in Arsal and later died in custody. She gave a written account on her Facebook page of how the attempt to establish credible autopsy reports of the men’s bodies undermined. She accused military intelligence of seizing the samples she was transporting for independent autopsies, and then sending those samples to the governmental hospital. Shehadeh’s Facebook account included a video of this encounter.

As her account began to spread on social media, the Beirut Bar Association issued a directive preventing Shehadeh from appearing in the media pending a decision by Antonio Hashim, the head of the Beirut Bar Association. Shehadeh’s potential testimony was an inconvenient truth that had to be censored before it could have undermined the official framing of events. On 4 July 2017, the military issued a statement stating the cause of death for the four detained Syrian men. It “said that four detainees who ‘suffered from chronic health issues that were aggravated due to the climate condition’ died before being interrogated. It identified them as Mustafa Abd el Karim Absse, 57; Khaled Hussein el-Mleis, 43; Anas Hussein el-Husseiki, 32; and Othman Merhi el-Mleis. The army did not specify where it had detained them.”

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), “On July 4, 2017, the Lebanese military issued a statement saying four Syrians died in its custody following mass raids in Arsal, a restricted access area in northeast Lebanon where many Syrian refugees live. On July 14, Human Rights Watch received credible reports that a fifth Syrian detainee had also died in custody.” HRW went further to state that on “July 15, the army released a statement saying that it detained 356 people following these raids. It referred 56 for prosecution and 257 to the General Security agency for lack of residency. A humanitarian organization official told Human Rights Watch that children were among those detained.” HRW concluded that “any statement that the deaths of these individuals was due to natural causes is inconsistent with these photographs.”

Stimulating a Nationalist Mania

As time passed and more information from Arsal emerged, it became clear that the official framing of the Arsal raids and their aftermath was meant to justify the military operation while at the same time delegitimize efforts at solidarity with Syrian refugees in Lebanon. As the propaganda became ubiquitous, an ultra nationalist sentiment turned Syrians in Lebanon to an enemy within. They were rapidly dehumanized.

In response, the Socialist Forum called for a sit-in in solidarity with Syrian refugees to take place in downtown Beirut on Tuesday 18 July. The organization applied for and received official clearance from the Municipality of Beirut for the sit-in. This initiative challenged the dominant discourse and threatened to obstruct the systematic campaign to rally public opinion around the LAF. In order to undermine the initiative, apologists for the raids took to social media and created or shared a Facebook page titled the “Syrian People’s Union in Lebanon.” This page hijacked Socialist Forum’s call for a solidarity sit-in and sought to incite (or act like it was inciting) the public against the army. Yet several people noticed the use of Lebanese dialect in these posts, which led many to wonder which intelligence branch was operating the page. It was then that the Socialist Forum’s permit for the sit-in was leaked from inside the municipality, which then threatened the safety of organization’s members whose names were on the permit. In an atmosphere of extreme fear and intimidation, the Socialist Forum decided to canceled the sit-in.

Surrounding these developments was intensity of rumor production and circulation, primarily through social media (Facebook and WhatsApp in particular). What was effectively fake news regarding the intended sit-in by Socialist Forum was mobilized into a heightened sense of Lebanese nationalism. By the climax of the circulation of these rumors, the sit-in was framed as a call by Syrians to publicly insult the LAF. What followed was a literal festival of publically bashing Syrians. This in turn further stimulated the nationalist sentiment as violent images and videos went viral on social media. Several videos showed euphoric mobs of Lebanese men beating up Syrian boys and men.

In one video, a group of five Lebanese men grabbed a young Syrian man by the arm and led him around. One sees a bewildered victim being slapped around by a man who is also filming the act. The cameraman then invites his friends to partake in the beating of the trapped Syrian man as they shout, “Where are your papers?” A slap on the Syrian man’s head is followed by his timid replies of “my papers are at home, master. By god I didn’t do any thing, master.” The fact that this man had no papers on him was reason enough for this Lebanese mob to attack him, kicking and beating him, while shouting at him, “What are you doing out on the street at night? Fuck your sister . . . Do you support ISIS you fucking pimp? Fuck you and fuck ISIS. Are you going to protest tomorrow you pimp?” And another slap. At this point in the video, the Syrian man starts attempting to use his free arm to block the punches from different directions. The video ends with men shouting at their captive, summing up the essence of the nationalist hysteria that swept the country: “Say God and the Lebanese Army! Say fuck ISIS! Say fuck the most important person in Syria!” The insistence on the evocation of the Lebanese army’s superior status by these Lebanese men portrayed the transcendence of the army into a divine savior and sacred cow in the many of the public’s imagination.

This was not the first time Lebanese men mob Syrian men in Lebanon. Bursts of violence against Syrian men can be traced back to 2005, following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and the subsequent withdrawal of the Syrian military from Lebanon. This was also the year that ushered in the wave of political polarization and attendant socioeconomic breakdown in Lebanon which has now reached a critical stages. Yet the Syrians are certainly not the first group to experience the lash of intentionally mobilized Lebanese hyper nationalism. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have had their share of violence since 1948. It is a kind of violence that is literally pumped into the psyche of resentful Lebanese citizens, diverting their anger toward the other, the “stranger.”

The Intimacy of Nationalist Frenzy

On the morning of Monday 17July, there was Lebanese wartime music playing on the street in our neighborhood. The unusual calm that overtook a weekday morning in Ras Beirut felt like the same kind of quiet the city exhibits in times of war. On the street below the apartment, there was a neighbor’s car blasting the music. The sky blue Kia had one of its front doors wide open. Around it stood men from the neighborhood who had flocked to the music. There they were: the barber, the butcher, and the taxi driver, along with three other men sipping coffee and blowing smoke in silence and anticipation. All six men had their heads craned in one direction, waiting to catch every soundbite of breaking news about the topic that the country was gripped by. The scene did not bode well. I quickly had a flash back to previous periods of war in Lebanon, when the intensity of events overtook the daily routines and their chaotic noise. War—and there was talk of war—certainly unites. However, that particular type of Beirut moment corresponds to particular wars: when Israel attacks Lebanon; or at times when the Lebanese army attacks non-Lebanese residents of the country. People had literally taken the bait and began feeling like and thinking of the country was being at war.

It is worth noting that the Monday I am describing was that which followed the cancellation of the Socialist Forum sit-in, which was originally planned for Tuesday of that same week. It was during the weekend before these two days that we can identify the consolidation of an official narrative that succeeded in diverting peoples’ frustrations and directing it toward the “stranger” within. Then, the minister of interior announced a total ban on demonstrations throughout the country. He asserted that he has given instructions to reject all protest permit requests in order to preserve security and peace. It is worth noting that was all happening at the same time the other protests were planned against the government’s planned increases to various taxes and fees.

On Friday 21 July, I was chatting with the manager of a construction site in one affluent Ras Beirut neighborhood. Being much older than the twelve builders on the site, and the one who had been in Lebanon the longest, Abu Ahmad makes sure each worker is doing his assigned job from seven in the morning until five in the afternoon. As we spoke, Beirut’s sun was hotter than usual. With Friday prayers about to begin, the street had suddenly quieted down. From a distance, I could hear the imam of the nearby mosque. It was then that I realized Abu Ahmad and his team were still working on the construction site even though it was their habit to take their lunch break after coming back from Friday prayers at the mosque. I asked Abu Ahmad why he was not at the mosque for Friday prayers. He looked at me with suspicious eyes, then wiped the sweat from his forehead with the red towel on his shoulder. He went on cleaning his whole face with the towel as if trying to hide his sense of guilt for not attending Friday prayers at the mosque. “Look my brother, we don’t need the headache. May God forgive us for abandoning our duty.” I asked what he meant by not needing any headache, and since when was it a problem to go to the mosque on Friday? My question was followed by a good ten seconds of silence as Abu Ahmad started to get fidgety, moving his towel from one shoulder to another. As I stood there waiting, he said, “Can’t you see what is going on? Syrians have to be careful these days not to arouse any suspicion. Any word we say or any place we attend has to be one of the utmost necessity. It is better that we focus on making our living here.” Abu Ahmad’s sunburned wrinkled face became twitchy. He was visibly uncomfortable as he went on saying, “Look, my brother, it maybe the signs of the end of times and God only knows, a pious Syrian these days could easily be mistaken for an extremist.” Abu Ahmad walked away looking around as if to see if anyone else was listening to our conversation. As he walked away, he said, “May god keep the watching eyes away from us.” This was another indication of how fear-stricken Syrians had become in context of their intensified dehumanization following the Arsal raid.

Structural Scapegoating or Fundamental Racism?

To simply attribute what has transpired as a function of Lebanese citizens being “naturally racist,” as some activists do, is to negate the ongoing systematic campaign to produce a literally permissible body for the public to vent their outrage on. Categorizing all outbursts of violence against Syrians as a function of permanent racism is an over-simplification that overlooks the workings of this systemic campaign. Beyond being morally irreprehensible, the demonization and targeting of Syrians has effectively diverted many Lebanese citizen’s frustration at their own rulers, channeling it toward scapegoating Syrian refugees. This violence against Syrians did not simply surface, it was mobilized, encouraged, and sanctioned through the speeches of Lebanese politicians, the branding of Lebanese public relations firms, the coverage of media outlets, and the manipulation of social media networks.

The influx of Syrian refugees since 2011 has created contradictory sentiments among the broader population of Lebanon. On the one hand, there is an element of genuine human sympathy, which can be identified in numerous individual acts of kindness, generosity, and solidarity. One Lebanese mother opened up her dead son’s grave for a Syrian family to bury their son. He had died in a fire that consumed al-Raed Camp in the Bekaa Valley, and yet all the surrounding villages refused to have him buried in their graveyards.

On the other hand, political elites and forces, along with affiliated media outlets, propagate a dominant narrative that demonizes Syrians. They have actively scapegoated Syrian refugees and literally blamed them for economic, social, and security failures in the country. These discourses are then replicated echoed and contributed to through the daily politics of many individuals and groups, forging a xenophobic and racist popular culture that is anti-Syrian refugees. This scapegoating and dehumanization is not a function of some natural inclination toward racism. Rather, it signals a deep crisis that the Lebanese state and its ruling elite have been facing at least since 2005, which intensified during the 2015 garbage protests. This crisis is simultaneously political, economic, and social.

One must not lose sight of the fact that this most recent wave of anti-Syrian xenophobia has effectively diverted some of the social pressures and political frustrations that were targeting the government in particular but the political elites more generally. This is not new of course. Quite the contrary, these political forces have regularly deflected attention away from themselves, mobilizing parts of the population against the weakest bodies in the country: women, migrant workers, refugees, and the impoverished.

With the public caught up in the nationalist rhetoric of standing with the army and defending the nation, the political elite were able to use the Arsal operations and their aftermath to reset the public agenda. The elites effectively deflated significant (and angry) calls for protests against the government’s plans to pass a controversial tax bill. The public outrage against the government was, according to some analysts, poised to galvanize the public in ways reminiscent of the 2015 protests. Instead, many of those energies now took up alleged threat posted by Syrians and the need to defend the LAF against material and symbolic injury. This is evidenced by the fact that politicians convened a closed parliamentary session and indeed passed the controversial tax bill with little to no public scrutiny as to what was being plotted inside an illegitimate expired parliament. On Wednesday, 19 July, parliamentarians had passed a second legislative bill concerning taxes meant to finance the public sector wage hike. The bill was passed with some amendments. Article 11 of the bill imposed an exit travel fee for those leaving Lebanon through the airport. The new tax bill made all Lebanese citizens, independent of income levels, owe the same percentage as tax. The worker who earns a monthly salary of $400 delivering drinking water now pays the same tax rate as a millionaire who owns luxury apartment buildings on Beirut’s seafront. These new taxes were an addition to a different set of tax hikes approved in March, including an increase in the VAT tax rate to eleven percent.

Syrian and Lebanese: Victims of the Same Social Order

As the battle to “cleanse” Arsal’s hills was waged by LAF and Hizballah, all eyes were fixed on the extensive live coverage of the battle. The dominant public discourse was at its peak when centered in scenario that pitted a hero fighting a villain. The LAF was made to look like everyone’s protecting father and the “Syrians” were dressed in the role of the villain. As the battle intensified in the hills of Arsal, a public relations campaign swept the country. The LAF became a brand. Advertisement companies, who ran ads for banks, restaurants, and various economic sectors now pushed images of military men with sleazy catch phrases about protection.

One day, I was sitting and melting inside a taxi that was moving sluggishly through Beirut’s traffic. While the radio was playing nationalist songs interrupted by breaking news from the battlefield, a scene of wretchedness unfolded outside my passenger widow. In between bumpers, a frantic moth-eaten man was carrying a young girl who wrapped herself around his thin body. The man was holding a yellow money note in his other hand and anxiously waved down a woman across the street from him. His eyes were wide open in astonishment. As he shouted in the direction of the woman across the street, his voice grew more high-pitched. He beseeched her. Shuffling single-mindedly toward the man was a woman who pried herself from her shady spot under a massive rubber tree on the other side of the street from him. She began to zigzag her way between the slow-moving cars. The woman herself was holding an infant while two young boys clung to her as they tailed on her heels.

“Come over, move quickly, bring the children and hurry up. The man in the black car just gave me 10,000 liras [approximately six dollars].” This exhausted woman was merely reacting to her husband’s urgency and astonishment. “Come, come hurry up grab the bag of tissues and go to the man in the black car before he drives away. I’m telling you he gave me 10,000. Look 10,000.” The frantic husband flashed the yellow note for his wife to see. The struggling woman was clearly trying to maintain her composure, but her face failed to hide her embarrassment. Streams of sweat ran down her forehead. She pushed closer to the black car. But the traffic light flashed green and the black car drove away. As our car started to move away the husband’s voice broke out in anguish, shouting at his apparent wife who just missed their chance to perhaps score another 10,000.

While we sat in the car and watched this scene of a Syrian family struggling on the streets selling hand tissues and not yet begging, the taxi driver next to me snapped. “10,000? How nice, did you see that? The Syrians are living much better than us in our own country. Nothing is left for us.” The woman in the backseat and I both remained silent, dumbfounded by the humiliating experience that took place right next to us. After few seconds of silence, the taxi driver went on again, “I drive all day so I can take 40,000 liras home.” To this, I responded with “at least we are still sitting inside the car.” The driver, who was no older than forty, released his clinched hands from the steering wheel wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and replied “by god you are right, may god never bring us to such disgrace. May god help them get out of the street. What a terrible situation for us all, O god forgive us”. The car drove away from the scene of human devastation and the driver took out his generic pack of cigarettes and offered me and the other passenger to join him. As he lit his cigarette, inhaling deeply, the taxi driver went back to the usual line of resentful complaints cursing and insulting Lebanese politicians: “The thieves….”

[This article is published jointly in partnership with Salon Syria