To
Be Palestinian In Lebanon Is To Be Wished A Thousand Deaths
By Sami Hermez
writing from Baddawi Refugee Camp
03 June, 2007
Electronic
Lebanon
I have
been to the Baddawi camp twice now. It is swarming with people and has
more than doubled in population. The future of the camp is bleak and
according to the World Health Organization the likelihood of disease
is high, and there is limited water and electricity. The number of civilian
deaths in the Nahr al-Bared camp is difficult to determine due to a
media blackout; my last check saw a range between 17 and 40, but today's
indiscriminate bombing from land and sea has certainly increased this
figure. In the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, on 31 May, there was a single
story that only reported the details of the deaths of Lebanese soldiers.
The official number from the Lebanese army over last weekend was a resounding
one civilian death.
By denying Palestinian civilian
deaths we effectively commit a double crime: The first is the indiscriminate
death of the victim; the second is the denial of this original crime.
I suppose the victim is meant to carry a camera and document her own
death to truly confirm it in the public's eyes.
I felt this as I stood in
front of two Palestine Red Crescent Society volunteers in the Baddawi
camp while they argued about the number of victims and how the army
was making it difficult to document the deaths and the situation in
the camp. I stood as they tried to prove to me, hoping I would get the
word out, that there was more than one death. It mattered so much to
them; it mattered more than the world that there was more than one death.
In my mind I caught a glimpse of the idealist romantic in me and thought
of how the world should react to even one death; that it was not in
the numbers, it was in the act itself. But I caught myself and came
back to the ways of this world: the numbers do matter; the proof of
dead bodies is required, and the media needs pictures, names, time and
cause of death before it will believe the story of the victim over that
of the state. As it stands, the Palestinian is killed and then denied
the recognition of her unjust death. With no recognition of injustice
how can people deal with their loss?
And it is not the first injustice
denied to these people. It begins with the denial of their right to
return to Palestine. Standing in an overcrowded Baddawi camp, I found
myself making conversation by asking one man a question about his origins;
a painful question for a Palestinian refugee.
To be Palestinian in Lebanon
is to be wished a thousand deaths and hunted a million times.
And the man's reply was that
his family was originally from a village outside of Haifa. His grandfather
fled to Tel al-Zaatar; any Lebanese can tell you about the massacre
there in 1976. After which they fled to Chatilla; any Lebanese can tell
you about the massacre there in 1982. And so after that they fled to
Nahr al-Bared; few Lebanese will tell you what is happening there now
or call it a massacre. He is now in the Baddawi camp hoping to return,
but if the curse of Palestinian return is any indication, it might be
decades before this man, Nasser, returns to anywhere but the UNRWA school
he resides in now. And that is probably the real reason why there are
still about 10,000 people in Nahr al-Bared who refuse to leave what
they now call their homes. They already have experience from the last
time they left.
Mona, a woman from the Nahr
al-Bared camp, reinforces this idea. She speaks to me passionately:
"I care deeply about the camp. It is the symbol of my refuge; it
is the place from where I will defend my cause and from where I struggle
for my right to return to Palestine." She continued: "If they
remove all civilians from Nahr al-Bared the army will completely demolish
the camp. I need to defend the camp. In a few days we will all return
if there is no solution. People want the civilians out but we will return.
We are thinking of this option now if things stay as they are."
She reminds me of the Lebanese
in the war this summer speaking in relation to the South: how they wanted
to return and how the men did not want to leave. People here value home
as an extension of their lives and their bodies. They want to remain
because escaping into the uncertain world is an infringement on their
humanity and perhaps equal, at that moment of departure, to the finality
of death. For some reason the Lebanese expect the Palestinians to just
desert their homes as if they were meaningless when they themselves
would not and have a history of staying their ground.
At the camp, one of the guys
there tells me that in recent years there has been more intermixing
between Palestinians and Lebanese, and that this was new. He said this
with enthusiasm to show a common ground between us, and that he thought
better times were ahead. I suppose the idea is that marriage brings
two tribes together, so why not two nations. It doesn't seem to work
that way though. No matter how many mixed national marriages there are
between the Lebanese and Palestinians or Lebanese and Syrians, the people
still fight. Kinship and nation-state politics don't really work in
the same way as kinship does with tribal politics. Somehow the relationships
don't have meaning in state diplomacy, and it is perhaps because of
the firm detachment between the family and the state. So we can intermarry
from here till next century but to no avail. The state will adamantly
privilege the general population over the family and the general population
will remain "purely Lebanese" -- whatever that means.
The Lebanese army is committing
crimes in the Nahr al-Bared camp and the Lebanese are silent. Perhaps
the Lebanese should imagine the camp was a Beirut neighborhood and Fatah
al-Islam was hiding, lets say, in Ashrafieh or the Hamra area. They
should then ask themselves if they would be calling on the army to use
the same methods to get rid of the group.
Agreed, terrorists should
not hide behind civilians, but when they do, state armies also have
a responsibility to not destroy the civilian population. Remember, the
civilians are victims and now the army is killing the victim. The Palestinians
of Nahr al-Bared are hostages. The army is killing the hostage and destroying
his town and home. Is there logic to this?
The Palestinians cannot be
punished for their leadership's incompetence. Otherwise, we should ask
if the Lebanese people should be punished for their leadership's incompetence.
The Lebanese army can take a stand but it needs to do so within the
rules of war. If it cannot, then it should not fight a battle it cannot
win.
Here is where the Lebanese
people and government are to fault. The people are to fault for their
silence and the government for its unaccountable behavior, its inability
to govern its own affairs and then blaming it on everyone else, and
its direct or indirect complicity in the arming of Fatah al-Islam. Again,
I call for a full investigation of the recent events and into the dealings
of the top politicians (Opposition and March 14) in the country. With
no accountability there will always be political space for militias
to harvest.
Note: In the meantime, tonight
we are beginning to hear that things in the Ein al-Hilweh camp in the
South are starting to flare up. None of this is making sense; something
is definitely not right!
Sami Hermez
is a doctoral student of anthropology at Princeton University researching
violence and armed resistance in Lebanon and has been active in relief
and redevelopment projects in the south of Lebanon. Sami can be reached
at shermez at princeton.edu.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.