When the news reported that Lebanese security killed 18-year-old Ahmad Al Qasim in the Nahr Al Bared refugee camp on June 15, over a dispute concerning a motorbike rider without proper ID, the camp’s Palestinian refugee population expressed anger and dismay. Within a few days, outrage and violence spread, and more refugees were killed. One was Fouad Muhi’edeen Lubany who was killed on June 18, as a crowd of mourning refugees attempted to bury the first victim of Nahr Al Bared, located north of Tripoli. Another was Khaled Al Youssef, who was shot in Ein Al Hilweh refugee camp, near Saida, about 50 km south of Beirut. More Palestinians were reportedly injured, along with three Lebanese security officers.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon exist on the margins of a larger political issue concerning the country’s irreconcilable sectarian, factional and familial divides. This makes it somewhat difficult to place the tragedy of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon within one single pertinent political context, in Lebanon’s enduring conflicts where political alliances are in a constant state of flux. So when issues concerning Palestinian refugees in Lebanon take place, they become almost entirely hostage to political analysis, considerations and hyped factional sensitivities.

The challenge is hardly how to tackle the underpinnings of such dramas or to urgently examine the relationship between economic, social and other forms of alienation and political violence. The priority becomes how to, once again, conceal the festering problem.

The problem, however, will not disappear on its own. In Lebanon, there are 450,000 United Nations-registered refugees who subsist in poverty in 12 concentration camp-like physical entities, denied basic rights and even a nominal political horizon.

They were mostly forced out of Palestine between 1947-48 by Zionists militias, which later formed the Israeli army.

It was no accident that Nahr Al Bared was established in 1949. But since then, little, if any, substantial effort has been made to remedy some of the numerous problems created by that violent dispossession.

Years later, Palestinian refugees became embroiled in Lebanon’s existing conflicts, first by accident — since it happened that the majority of the refugees are Sunni Muslims — and later by design, especially following the PLO’s departure from Jordan in the early 1970s. Following the Israeli war on Lebanon in 1982 — accompanied by the infamous massacres at Sabra and Shatilla, among others — the fate of the refugees worsened, being now nearly completely neglected.

In the summer of 2007, the Lebanese army clashed with an extremist grouping, Fateh Al Islam, which had earlier moved to Nahr Al Bared. According to Amnesty International, “the violence caused considerable destruction to the camp, forcibly displaced the camp’s 30,000 residents and led to at least 400 deaths, including 42 civilians and 166 Lebanese soldiers”.

“Considerable destruction” is putting it mildly. The camp was literally “reduced to rubble”, as was described in a report in the Lebanese Daily Star, on June 22. Many media outlets reported the story as if it had been just another fight between an army and an Al Qaeda-inspired group, without making much fuss about the fact that within the confines of that lethal fight, hundreds of families barely subsisted, mostly unemployed, impoverished and homeless.

Five years have passed since Nahr Al Bared was destroyed, yet many of its residents remain suspended between an old refugee status — as Palestinians who were forced out or fled Zionist violence in Palestine in 1948 — and new refugee status, fleeing from one refugee camp to another. This condition of old-new destitution is highlighted in but not unique to Nahr Al Bared. It is an experience shared by many Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Despite the many tragedies that struck the dwellers of Lebanon’s refugee camps over the years, (which provide enough insight to the nature of the Palestinian refugee problem in the country — thus offering obvious clues to how to remedy it) much of the political discussion is devoid of any substance.

Lebanon-based US writer Franklin Lamb quoted a statement by Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji, which said that a “thorough [and] a swift investigation will determine the perpetrators and prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future”.

Lamb, rightly comments: “Given past experience, few believe the investigation will be serious or even completed.”

The country’s interior minister conveniently discounted the obvious link between the clashes in Nahr Al Bared and Ein Al Hilweh as mere coincidence. (Akhbar Al Youm, June 20, as referenced by Lamb)

PLO and Fateh official Azzam Al Ahmad told the Daily Star, during a recent visit to Lebanon, that “regional powers are exploiting the hardship of Palestinian refugees … to push their own agendas in Lebanon”. He insisted that those powers do not include Syria.

Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees continue to be victimised by a bewildering political landscape and unmistakable discrimination by the state under the pretense that Palestinian refugees are temporary “guests” in Lebanon. Now even third generation “guests” of a UN-registered population of nearly 450,000 refugees are denied home ownership, inheritance of land or real estate, and are barred from many professions.

This state of near complete economic stagnation has resulted in socio-economic regression that places Palestinian refugees in Lebanon at a very low standing, with little hope for the future.

In its report released on June 20 to coincide with World Refugee Day, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) resolved that “the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are considered the worst of the region’s refugee camps in terms of poverty, health, education and living conditions”.

ANERA reported that two out of three refugees subsist on less than $6 a day, and that discrimination against them is expressed in multiple areas, from health to education, to housing and others.

It is important to note the role that Israel has played in perpetuating the suffering of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon — everywhere else for that matter. But extending that to include the inhumane treatment of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon no longer suffices.

As in the case of refugees the world over, Palestinians must be repatriated and compensated for their losses, pain and suffering. Until that goal is achieved, refugees must be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of the political calculation of their host countries.

The Palestinian refugees’ predicament in Lebanon must be handled with decisiveness and urgency. It is a responsibility that ought to be shared by the Lebanese government, the Palestinian leadership, the Arab League and the United Nations.

Any more neglect of the potential crisis could push it to become real.