Donate NowThe three months of fighting at Nahr al-Bared last year brought a period of relative unity to Lebanon. In a country whose political process is founded on sectarianism, the army is one of the few state organs free of religious-based schism. The Nahr al-Bared conflict, which pitted the army against the shadowy, foreign, Fatah al-Islam group, led Lebanese citizens of every sect to rally together behind their army.
Lebanon's Palestinians, too, were drawn together in solidarity with the 30,000 Palestinian residents of Nahr al-Bared made homeless by the conflict. Many escaped under shelling and sniper fire, on foot without food, money or possessions. Some 15,000 ended up in Beddawi, the nearest camp to Nahr al-Bared, 10km down the road.
"It's like what happened in Palestine," Fadmae Saadi, 70, who fled early in the conflict with her son Bassem and his wife and four daughters. "In Palestine, they didn't destroy the houses like they did here." Fadmae was 10 at the time of the nakba (disaster), when her family was uprooted from its home in the village of Harissa outside Haifa, now in northern Israel. The upheaval of the Nahr al-Bared conflict made the nakba a point of reference for her. In the weeks and months that followed, it became clear to the refugees that with their camp destroyed, they would not be returning soon.
"Nahr al-Bared, for us, it's not only houses, it's our history," said Nael Abu Siam, 40. He was born in Nahr al-Bared and has no memory of Palestine, except the stories his parents told him of the country they remembered. The nakba is now also his point of reference, as it is for many other children of Palestinian exiles who hoave found themselves exiled again – this time from their refugee camp. "Nahr al-Bared is for us the second Palestine; we have to return because we have everything there, our memories, friends, houses — everything."
At first the Palestinians of Beddawi camp were compassionate when the 15,000 Nahr al-Bared refugees arrived to their camp. Beddawi's population doubled within weeks and its residents cleared schoolrooms and sheds, helping their fellow Palestinians settle in and wait for UNRWA, the UN agency, to take them back to Nahr al-Bared. The wait was longer than expected. "The crisis was difficult to handle and UNRWA did not do it perfectly," said Henri Disselkoen, who was hired by UNRWA partly to manage the crisis. The agency was criticised over the 10 months it took to start moving the refugees back.
Disselkoen says its response was complicated by factors beyond its control: the army sealed off Nahr al-Bared after the conflict, halting the return, and local Lebanese were reluctant to lease land to UNRWA to house Palestinians while their camp was being cleared and rebuilt.
In September 2007, two months after the refugees moved into Beddawi's schools, the summer holidays ended and the camp's children could not return to their schools, but had to go to Lebanese schools outside. Electricity and water became scarcer. Refuse mounted as the already over-burdened infrastructure of Beddawi crumbled under the enormous pressure. As the winter deepened, the bonds that had held the Palestinians together frayed and the solidarity gradually fell away to reveal intensifying tension between Palestinians of Nahr al-Bared and Palestinians of Beddawi.
"Sixty years ago, they came from two different areas, both in the north of Palestine," says Disselkoen. "They were in different camps and in 60 years they had their own social and cultural developments. These became different societies." Fights broke out, property was damaged, there were stabbings. By January, when UNRWA announced a phased return of the refugees to prefabricated housing units around the defunct camp, the tension had reached breaking point in Beddawi.
In March, the move began. UNRWA gave the Nahr al-Bared refugees the choice between a prefabricated metal housing unit beside Nahr al-Bared or several months' rent for a private apartment in the Tripoli area. Most of the refugees chose the small, metal units, preferring to be near their camp.
The move back is being staggered — families are being moved out of Beddawi and the other camps as UNRWA secures more land on which to place temporary housing units. The move should be completed by the end of August. Then the refugees will await the rebuilding of their camp and community.