A
Visit To Shatila
By Bilal El-Amine
08 July, 2004
Zmag
On a recent visit to Lebanon where I'm
from, a friend who works with Palestinian refugees arranged for a group
of us to visit Shatila camp in Beirut. I had seen some of Lebanon's
camps from the outside-one boarding school I attended when I was young
was close to the Ein Hilweh camp, the largest and most militant camp
in Lebanon. Another, Borj el-Barajneh camp, greeted you just outside
the airport on the main road, there was no avoiding it.
There are close
to 400,000 registered Palestinian refugees in Lebanon living in 13 camps
ranging in size from 1,000 to 45,000. They are carefully (and deliberately,
according to some refugees) distributed throughout the country but well
away from the border with Palestine. (See With Palestine, Against the
Palestinians at http://www.refugees.org/wrs04/pdf/66-73.pdf for a great
overview of the dire Palestinian refugee situation in Lebanon.)
Shatila is a cramped
(as they all are), one-square-kilometer camp of 13,000 and probably
more if you include the Syrian laborers and other foreign workers who
are increasingly moving into some camps. It was established by the Red
Cross in 1949; the land it sits on is leased and largely run-for better
or worse-by UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East).
We sat in a small
room, the office of al-Najda (a women's NGO active in many camps), next
to their cooperative hair salon. We asked Nuhad, who works for al-Najda
and grew up in Shatila to give us a general history of the camp before
we were taken to see it. So she told us her story, a personal account
of what she endured and saw.
She told us of how
tents slowly gave way to more durable shelter in the 1950s, of how hundreds
had to share one public bathroom, of growing up without electricity
or water. How secretly at night they would build ceilings under their
corrugated tin roofs. She said that when it rained and the roof sprung
a leak, they would patch it with a flattened soda bottle cap.
The next decade
was spent in fear as political tensions built up in Lebanon. The Lebanese
military and intelligence services tightened their grip on the camps,
surrounding them with troops and monitoring refugees' activities. It
took the arrival of the PLO from Jordan after the Black September (1970)
events to break the siege and bring some semblance of life and hope
to the camps.
Nuhad talked about
the early seventies as the best years-the PLO's presence and its political
muscle transformed the camps, allowing the refugees to improve their
living and economic conditions. But this would be tragically cut short
as the Lebanese civil war is inaugurated in 1975 with the massacre of
a busload of Palestinian civilians, murdered in cold blood by far-right
Christians who wanted to cleanse Lebanon of all Palestinians.
Later in 1982, these
same Christian fanatics in alliance and coordination with Israeli occupation
forces in Lebanon would attempt to physically carry out their dream
by methodically massacring 2,000-3,000 Palestinians in Shatila and nearby
Sabra.
Nuhad told us of
how it all transpired, how even though there was mounting evidence that
something ugly was going on in the camp, they could not fathom that
an all-out massacre was being conducted. Even though the camp was emptied
of its fighters under a US-brokered agreement, no one was spared, not
the children, not the elderly. Many bodies were mutilated, women were
raped by drunken militiamen who left empty whisky bottles among the
corpses. It was an orgy of death that no one, not even people in the
camp, could imagine.
The massacre started
at the western and southern part of the camp. Those like Nuhad who lived
on the east side of the camp could flee directly into the surrounding
neighborhoods where previously they were given shelter by various Lebanese
left groups, hospitals and mosques. But with Israel in control of most
of Beirut, the fleeing refugees had nowhere to go-many Lebanese wouldn't
risk protecting them this time. It was only after three consecutive
nights of carnage that word got out to the international media-Nuhad
said she saw the first group of foreign journalist enter the camp and
heard for the first time through a London radio station about what had
happed on the other side of the camp.
Nuhad hardly paused
before hurling us into yet another catastrophe that befell Shatila-what
is known as the "Camps War" that lasted for three years from
1985-87. According to Nuhad, these were the worst years she could remember,
nearly all of camp was destroyed by the end, hundreds died. Somehow,
surely by some miracle, the people of the camp persevered and rebuilt
their shattered homes and lives once again. Today they live on, but
as Nuhad tells it, with little hope and meager resources.
As we walked through
the camp to the mass grave where many of the 1982 massacre victims were
buried, poverty was on full display in every nook and cranny. Everything
was ad hoc, barely patched together, as if it were temporary, even though
the camp is now 55 years old. The Lebanese government continues to do
all it can to make sure that the Palestinians in Lebanon never feel
any sense of permanence-two years ago a new law was passed to prevent
refugees from owning or even inheriting any property.
This situation cannot
possibly continue indefinitely. Many groups like al-Najda are working
hard to address the endless social and economic problems that plague
the camps, but international pressure from pro-Palestinian activists
is necessary to pressure that Lebanese authorities to extend the most
basic rights to the refugees. The excuse often used by the government
that normalizing conditions for Palestinian refugees would undermine
their will to return to Palestine hardly stands given that Palestinian
refugees in Syria and Jordan (not to mention in Europe and the US) continue
to struggle for the right of return even though they have been granted
many basic rights denied the Lebanese refugees.
For more information
about Palestinian refugees, go to the UNRWA website at http://www.un.org/unrwa/.
Bilal El-Amine is
the editor of Left Turn Magazine. He lives in New York and can be reached
at [email protected]