Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

December 16, 2007 | Pulitzer Center

Lebanon's dozen Palestinian camps are segregated from the surrounding social fabric.

Their boundaries have changed little in 60 years, despite the tripling of the population since the first 100,000 refugees streamed into Lebanon after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's inception.

Today, the grandchildren of that first generation grow up in urban slums, which are home to the highest rates of abject poverty of any Palestinian settlements in the diaspora. Denied education or healthcare by the Lebanese state, Palestinians go to U.N.-administered schools and hospitals.

The schools of the Beddawi camp now host 270 families from Nahr al-Bared. The Beddawi students that would normally fill the classrooms have been absent for nine months now.

The school's new occupants are doing their best to make themselves at home.

They sleep on floor mats, cook on portable stoves, and hang the laundry where they can.

Their children play amid the boxes of food and clothes donated by aid agencies.

During a recent cold snap, those without heaters gather around makeshift fires to stay warm at night.

Hassan Shaker brought his fiancée to tour a showcase prefabricated home at Beddawi. Last week, the U.N. began to move 300 of the more than 4,000 families still displaced into the prefab units on a lot at Nahr al-Bared, the first wave of 1,500 families that are set to return by August.

The units provide tight quarters, but at least they offer some privacy.