The Ongoing Nakba in Lebanon: The Case of Nahr el-Bared Refugee Camp
Picture a drawing simply depicting a man flying through the air
with a caption by a young Palestinian child that reads, "I wish to
become Superman so I can help all people, and fly over the
checkpoint without having to give him a passing permit or identity
card."[1] Imagine another drawing, a
collage made up of Arabic words and black paint to form a road with
the caption, "One year after the battle, we are still waiting to
return home."[2] These are not words
and images from Palestinians in Gaza. Nor are they from
Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp. They were created by
Palestinians in Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon in a
book that chronicles the war on their camp in the summer of 2007,
their displacement, and their fight for their right to return to
their camp.
The stories and representations of the children's experiences give
some insight into the latest chapter of the ongoing Nakba for
Palestinians in Lebanon. One girl's stick figure self-portrait
narrates her story: "My problem is that when I see a house in Nahr
El-Bared destroyed, and everything in it ruined, I feel sad and
alone and sometimes I cry because we spent all our lives in it, and
because we left it and ran away to Beddawi [refugee
camp]."[3] A photograph of two
Palestinian women and children sitting on a classroom floor with
mattresses stacked behind them has a caption that reads, "Living in
a school is not like living at
home."[4] One girl shares a photograph
of her parents and tells us, "My father says, 'Either back to Nahr
El-Bared or back to Palestine. We don't want a third
option.'"[5] And yet another such image
depicts a black-and-white drawing of a building, with Palestinians
standing in front carrying a colored-in Palestinian flag, with the
caption, "We want to return to Nahr
El-Bared."[6] Images of checkpoints
surrounding Nahr el-Bared and temporary refugees in Beddawi refugee
camp fill this book of testimonies. Photographs of destruction in
the camps and of objects found, of the new UNRWA barracks in the
camp, and of weddings and new beginnings. Children tell stories of
flight and of fear in confrontations with Fatah el-Islam and of
their desire to return to the camp; "I wish to go back and see the
house in which I spent the best days of my
childhood."[7] Many of these narratives
mark a shift in language from a right of return to Palestine to a
right of return to Nahr el-Bared.
Nahr el-Bared refugee camp was not supposed to exist. It was not
one of the sites where Palestinian refugees went to await their
return to their homes and villages in northern Palestine and in its
coastal cities. After their expulsion from Palestine, some refugees
traveled north towards Syria: "'people who settled there were on
their way to Syria. When the Syrian government decided not to
accept any more refugees, the border was closed and they were
obliged to stay there. Later, UNRWA transformed the site into a
camp.'"[8] Originally, the residents of
Nahr el-Bared came from one particular village in Palestine: "'In
the 1950s, 90 percent of the people in the camp were from
Saffuriya.'"[9] Today, people from
Saffuriyya make up only about half the camp's residents.The change
of the camp's demographics is related to the ongoing Nakba for
Palestinians in Lebanon which includes forced displacement,
expulsion, and massacres over the last sixty-two
years.[10]
But the story of Nahr el-Bared is not only one of destruction or
in-fighting. When the Palestinian Revolution came to Lebanon in
1969 their battle was not only with the Zionist enemy south of the
border. They were also fighting to liberate the camps from the
repressive maktab al-thani (Deuxième Bureau) which, beginning in
the 1950s, functioned as the Lebanese government's agency for
suppressing everything from political activity to housing
regulations in the camps.[11] Many
Lebanese supported the fedayeen by fighting alongside them against
Zionist aggression, as well as demonstrating against the Lebanese
authorities trying to repress dissent. It was also a time when
Palestinian resistance achieved some important victories. One of
those victories came when Nahr el-Bared was surrounded by the
Lebanese army, like the other camps, but here the people were the
first camp to liberate themselves as Rosemary Sayigh reveals in an
interview with one of the fighters:
They brought tanks and the army tried to enter the camps. That day,
we can remember with pride, we brought out the few guns that we had
– there were eleven. We did well at first, but then we ran out of
ammunition. A rumor ran around the camp that the ammunition was
finished and we tried to calm the people by telling them that
rescue would come from the Resistance. But we didn't really know
whether it would come. But what was amazing was that people
returned to what they had been in 1948, preferring to die rather
than to live in humiliation. Women were hollering because it was
the first time a gun had been seen defending the camp. It was the
first battle that we didn't lose. The children were between the
fighters, collecting the empty cartridges although the bullets were
like rain. It was the first time that people held knives and sticks
and stood in front of their homes, ready to
fight.[12]
A few years later, in 1976, when Christian militias massacred
Palestinians and Lebanese in the Tell el-Za'atar and Jisr el-Basha
refugee camps during a fifty-three day siege, many Palestinians who
survived fled to Nahr el-Bared among other refugee
camps.[13]
The second victory came when the Lebanese Army and the PLO signed
the Cairo Accords in 1969, which "allowed Palestinians resident in
Lebanon 'to participate in the Palestinian revolution' and formally
sanctioned Palestinian guerrilla activity to originate from certain
border areas in Lebanon."[14]
Technically the agreement was repealed by the Lebanese parliament
in 1987, but has some important bearing on the more recent
situation. Equally significant was a policy that made Palestinian
lives more difficult, something that resonates with the more recent
context. In 1982 Sayigh explains that "The government also
unofficially requested UNRWA not to reissue ID cards that had been
lost or destroyed; without ID cards, Palestinians were liable to be
arrested."[15] Indeed, many were.
During the war on Nahr el-Bared, non-ID Palestinian refugees became
a high-risk group for those same reasons (there are between 3,000
and 5,000 Palestinians without IDs out of a total population of
409,714 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon). Some Palestinians without
IDs came from other countries; others had their papers lost or
destroyed, often when their homes and camps were demolished; still
others were born to non-ID parents.
Nahr el-Bared had 31,000 inhabitants when the fighting broke out
between the Lebanese army and Fatah el-Islam on 20 May 2007. Fatah
el-Islam was a militia that, according to Seymour Hersh, was
created indirectly by then U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, Saudi
Prince Bandar, and current Prime Minister of Lebanon Sa'ad Hariri.
The plan was for the U.S. to team up with what the U.S. views as
"moderate" Sunni governments like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt
and link them with Israel to fight Shi'a in the region. In 2005
Hariri “...paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four
members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had
been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in
northern Lebanon. The International Crisis Group noted that many of
the militants 'had trained in al-Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan.'”[16]
These men made up the initial core of Fatah el-Islam and were
equipped with cash and weapons to fight Hezbollah. Some of them
wound up in Ein el-Helweh refugee camp in the south before moving
north to Beddawi refugee camp; in both of these camps the residents
kicked them out. When Hariri's Mustaqbal (Future) Movement stopped
paying their monthly stipend of $700, some of these men turned to
bank robbery and fighting broke out first in Tripoli then, a few
kilometers north, in Nahr el-Bared, where the militants fled. Both
the U.S. and Lebanon maintained that Syria was behind Fatah
el-Islam, a claim that is illogical given Syria's alliance with
Hezbollah. Aside from its leader Shakr al-Abbasi, Fatah el-Islam
was not comprised of Palestinians; it was made up of mostly Yemeni,
Tunisian, Saudi, Lebanese, and Bangladeshi militants whose primary
concern was their antagonism towards Shi'a Muslims, not the
liberation of Palestine. Many of the people in this militia did not
even speak Arabic. Prior to the army's attack, both Nahr el-Bared
and Ein el-Helweh were the two refugee camps with entrances
controlled by the Lebanese army, a not-so-subtle indicator of their
collaboration.
When fighting broke out, Palestinians were trapped and only allowed
to flee after the first four days of fighting when the army called
for a brief "truce." As they fled, many people from the camp
described being attacked by yet another militia, a group whom they
described as being affiliated with Hariri's Mustaqbal Movement.
Much of this was surprising for Palestinians in this camp, many of
whom are married to Lebanese spouses and had vibrant and
intertwined social, economic, and familial ties with the
surrounding Lebanese villages. In fact, as a result of these
interrelations, Nahr el-Bared was a camp unlike any other: it had
large villas, access to the sea, a dairy factory, shops where
northern Lebanese shopped, and even agricultural areas. When they
fled, most went to Beddawi refugee camp ten kilometers south which
saw its population almost double over night from 15,000 to 27,000;
a quarter of the people stayed in UNRWA schools and the rest in
private homes.[17]
The refugees who fled called it a second Nakba: "The first one in
1948 was a black and white Nakba, it was easy to know who our
enemies were. This one was more
colourful."[18] But many Palestinians
did not flee right away. For those who experienced their first
Nakba in 1948 and then again in Tell el-Za'atar refugee camp in
1976, the past experience of forced displacement made them remain
so as not to lose their homes and communities yet again. One woman
noted "if they came here I wouldn't leave the camp. Even if they
destroyed it. If I left I'd lose everything, if I stayed at least
I'd die in my house."[19] Men, in
particular, stayed behind to defend the camp and care for the
wounded. When people did leave the camp they were routinely
subjected to interrogation by the army and taken directly to
prison, especially Palestinian men. Knowledge of these incidents
also made many Palestinians refuse to leave. Melad Salameh was one
who stayed behind. As a nurse at Shefa Clinic he wanted to tend to
the wounded. When he left wearing a vest and cargo pants filled
with medical equipment he was accused of treating Fatah el-Islam
fighters and of being a member of the militia. He was one of those
taken directly to prison. As soon as he was released, he began to
treat people in Beddawi's Shefa Clinic where he witnessed up close
the torture Palestinians from Nahr el-Bared experienced at the
hands of their jailers in Yarzeh prison:
"Many of the injuries we received...were sustained under detention,
inside the army detention centers. Many people came with signs of
torture, abuse and beatings. We saw signs of electrical shocks as
well, and some even reported sexual abuses, such as rape by
bottle."[20]
Most Palestinians left hastily with only the clothes on their
backs, sometimes with small plastic bags of medications, and some
without any paper documentation, adding them to the list of non-ID
Palestinians who could no longer move freely among the
ever-increasing number of checkpoints scattered throughout the
country. Even for those with IDs, many Palestinian men who worked
outside the camps were afraid to go to work because, increasingly,
Palestinian men were rounded up, detained, and harassed. Even
Palestinians in places like Beirut who were not from the camps,
particularly if their skin was dark, found themselves subjected to
racial profiling as the Internal Security Forces (ISF) would
approach them on the streets asking which side they were on. There
were two possible choices: the Lebanese army or Fatah
el-Islam.[21] Clearly not only
political support from the U.S. seeped into Lebanon, but also its
discourse.[22] Not surprisingly, then,
during the summer's fighting the U.S., U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and
Jordan all supplied the Lebanese army with equipment.
Over the course of the summer Palestinians fled to other camps
around the country. The homes in which they found refuge were often
overcrowded, at times with thirty people to two-room flats with
several people sharing each foam mattress on the
floor.[23] Eventually Lebanon opened a
couple of school buildings as housing for Palestinian families, but
most Lebanese did not open up their homes to people from Nahr
el-Bared. This is in sharp contrast to the Israeli war on Lebanon
the previous summer during which Lebanese villagers in the south
fled to Palestinian refugee camps where they were welcomed with
open arms.
The tension caused by the Lebanese army's battle against the camp
led to the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee issuing a letter
to all Palestinians, through Ambassador Khalil Makkawi and then
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, telling them that the attack on Nahr
el-Bared was an act of "self-defense" and not an attack on
Palestinians. Ironically, given the jingoistic billboards and
attitudes that made all Palestinians suspect, the recipients should
have been Lebanese.[24] What the letter
and the army's behavior revealed was that Lebanese security
depended upon Palestinian insecurity. This insecurity is not only
about personal safety, but also about the right to return to their
camp and to rebuild it the way they see fit. Early on Siniora made
it clear that he had plans for rebuilding the camp, plans that
signalled to many Palestinians that this was a premeditated,
planned attack on the camp. For Palestinians Siniora's ideas about
a "model camp", as he put it, was code for a return to the days of
the Deuxième Bureau, of the government's control, suppression, and
surveillance of the camps.
Unlike previous attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon,
the number of martyrs was relatively small. Between its outbreak
and its end on 4 September 2007, there were twenty-three
Palestinians murdered by the army, many of whom died because they
bled to death as a result of a lack of plasma or blood supply or
medical teams to handle the wounds (169 Lebanese soldiers, 287
Fatah el-Islam militants, and twenty-four Lebanese civilians were
also killed). As with other massacres there were severe
restrictions on ambulances and medical teams entering the camp
during the fighting. Most of the Lebanese media, with the exception
of Al-Akhbar and As-Safir, reported the attack on Nahr el-Bared
from the Lebanese army's point of view; indeed the government
threatened any news agency with lawsuits if its reporting did not
support the troops. Palestinian victims were nameless and faceless
and the line between them and Fatah el-Islam was purposefully
blurred. International media found their work severely hindered
and, until now, it is difficult for journalists to enter the camp
as all non-residents must apply for entry permits from the
army.
Likewise the return of Palestinians to their camp moved at a
snail's pace. The excuse given by the government and army was that
there were too many unexploded weapons. However, when compared to
the previous summer's war with Israel that argument fails to hold
water. In spite of the fact that there were millions of
American-made cluster bombs throughout southern Lebanon, people
returned home as soon as the Israeli forces retreated. What is more
revealing is the fact that the interior of many homes inside the
camp resembled Lebanese homes in south Lebanon, where one found
homes looted, where soldiers had defecated on furniture, painted
racist graffiti in the interior of homes, perched flags (Israeli
flags in the case of southern Lebanon, Lebanese flags in the case
of Nahr el-Bared) on top their destroyed homes, and shot bullets
through refrigerators and Qur'ans
alike.[25] This time, however, it was
not the Zionist enemy but the Lebanese army perpetrating those
violations. Indeed this is largely the reason for keeping both
Palestinians, journalists and human rights workers out of the camp.
It took an entire month before Palestinians were allowed into their
homes again, on 9 October, but even then only 8,000 Palestinians
(1,200 families) were allowed to return to their camp, 85% of which
had been destroyed.[26]
There were two sections of the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, and
return was dependent upon which side people were from. Those who
were allowed to return were only those from the "new camp." The
rubble of the homes in the "old camp" has been cleared, but it is
encircled with barbed wire, and people from the camp are forbidden
from entering. Today most of the people have returned to the camp.
Out of the original 5,550 families of Nahr el-Bared, only about 280
continue to live outside in camps in south Lebanon or Beirut.
People from Nahr el-Bared who are in other camps such as Ein
el-Helweh are fearful of growing tensions and are trying to return,
but there is no housing for them in Nahr el-Bared as it is already
overcrowded. Still there are others from the camp who have chosen
not to go back because they would rather not deal with the
continuing military blockade of the camp. All of them suffer from
living in an open-air prison which in some ways resembles the Gaza
Strip. The entire camp is now surrounded by army checkpoints for
which one needs a special resident ID card or army permission to
enter (now Lebanese citizens are allowed to enter without
permission); one needs to provide justification for entering,
including residents from the camp who have not yet returned. The
Lebanese intelligence set up offices inside the camp as well. This
is not only humiliating, but also affects the economic viability of
rebuilding the shops and businesses. UNRWA has invested around
three million dollars to reactivate Palestinian businesses, but
there is a sixty-percent unemployment rate, and almost the entire
population is dependent on UNRWA aid. There is no cash flow so
people cannot afford to purchase items from each other and must
rely on a barter and trade
system.[27]
For those who returned to the camp, many live in one of the five
housing units constructed by UNRWA which residents think of as
"modern-day tents." They are poorly constructed pre-fabricated
steel structures, or concrete rooms with steel roofs, that are
intensely hot in the summer and cold in the winter and average
about five people per one-room shelter. There is no privacy. Many
of these already have huge cracks in the walls. Those who could fix
their homes have done so on their own, without any outside help,
but those who could afford to do so have been the minority.
The army has also issued, in some cases, violent threats to many
people rebuilding their homes “without a permit.” In 2009, the
municipal authorities stopped granting building permits to people
from Nahr el-Bared, and the government has stopped any
reconstruction initiatives under the pretext that title to the
properties is disputed. In Nahr el-Bared, all property in the "new
camp" is informally owned by Palestinians who bought it from the
original Lebanese owners, but never officially registered it
because of the Lebanese law that discriminates against Palestinians
by forbidding them to own property. Rebuilding, then, has placed
Palestinians under the mercy of the Lebanese
government.[28] Indeed this seems to
have been premeditated; recently it was revealed that Siniora
signed a contract with the U.S. for ISF equipment in exchange for
interference with internal issues. This U.S.-funded project
includes, for the first time since the Cairo Agreement, the
installation of police stations in the camp with the aim of
implementing Lebanese laws that by their nature discriminate
against Palestinians.[29]
UNRWA has started to build 150 houses and are trying to find
sources of funding for the rest. The Lebanese contractor, Al-Jihad,
has been building at a very slow pace. The camp has now been
de-mined and the rubble removed. But the rebuilding continues to be
restricted to the area designated as the "new camp." Reconstruction
in the "old camp" is also moving at a snail's
pace.[30] There are eight packages for
the camp, only five of which have been designed, but only a few
buildings in the first package have started reconstruction and only
two stories were built for each.[31]
The stagnant pace of building, the imprisoned feeling of the people
in the camp, resonant with the past experience of the Deuxième
Bureau, has left people with a feeling of demoralization. Melad
Salemeh, a refugee from Jaffa, who now works with youth in the camp
says, "we need to be rebuilding spirits and souls, not just
houses."[32] The youth are especially
fed up, and many go to great lengths to find ways of emigrating to
Europe or elsewhere.
While the focus for Palestinians inside Nahr el-Bared may be on
rebuilding or emigration, in nearby Beddawi camp the residents fear
that their camp may be targeted and destroyed, repeating the
experience of Nahr el-Bared.[33]
Recently the army began building trenches around the camp and
tightening security around it; people fear that soon they will also
need special ID cards to enter their camp. To add to the stress,
army helicopters occasionally fly over these two northern- most
Palestinian refugee camps.[34] While
this may appear to be a solely Lebanese enterprise, one must recall
the initial role of the U.S. in creating Fatah el-Islam, the
pretext for the Lebanese army's destruction of Nahr el-Bared. As
with the agreement with former Prime Minister Siniora which will
likely spread to a policing of all the camps in Lebanon, the
American donation of twenty million dollars to rebuild Nahr
el-Bared is not a gesture of
philanthropy.[35] For Palestinians it
seems like an attempt to wrest control over Palestinian lives as a
proxy for the Israeli regime. The addition of Margot Ellis as
UNRWA's new Deputy Commissioner General is another specter that
Palestinian lives in the camps in Lebanon will experience a Zionist
agenda at their expense.[36] Ellis'
experience with USAID, America's imperial arm, is a harbinger that
the Americans want greater control over the lives of Palestinians
with the intended goal to encourage outward migration and eliminate
the right of return.[37]
-------------------------------------------------------
Marcy Newman is a scholar, a teacher, and an
activist invested in human rights who has taught literature
courses, as well as courses in American and Middle East Studies at
Boise State University, Al-Najah University, the American
University of Beirut, Al Quds University, the University of Jordan,
and the University of Ghana. You can visit her blog
at: bodyontheline.wordpress.com
[1] Al-Jana Center for the Popular Arts, Away from Home Again: A
creative Learning Odyssey by Palestinian Refugee Children at a Time
of War & Displacement. (Beirut: ARPCA/Al-Jana, 2010), 62.
[2] Ibid., 117.
[3] Ibid., 103.
[4] Ibid., 70.
[5] Ibid., 95.
[6] Ibid., 35.
[7] Ibid., 137.
[8] Julie Peteet, Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian
Refugee Camps. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2005), 108.
[9] Ibid., 113.
[10] Burj el-Barajneh camp was first attacked by the Lebanese air
force in 1973 followed by over 3,000 Israeli Occupation Forces
(IOF) attacks between 1968-1974, which culminated with the IOF
destruction of Nabatiyeh camp in the south. During the Lebanese
Civil War right-wing Lebanese militias attacked Tell el-Za'atar,
Jisr el-Basha, and Dbayeh refugee camps in 1976. During its 1982
invasion of Lebanon the IOF destroyed large sections of Rashidiyeh
and Ein el-Helweh camps. Later with its Phalangist partners the IOF
enacted a savage massacre of Shatila refugee camp and its
surrounding neighborhood of Sabra. Between 1985-1987 the war of the
camps between the Shi'a Amal militia and Palestinians destroyed
large sections of Shatila and Burj el-Barajneh. See Muhammad Ali
Khalidi, Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon 2001. (Beirut: Institute
for Palestine Studies, 2001). Also see Mahmoud El-Ali's article in
this issue.
[11] See Rosemary Sayigh, Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian
Experience in Lebanon. (London: Zed Books, 1994).
[12] Rosemary Sayigh, The Palestinians: From Peasants to
Revolutionaries. (London: Zed Books, 2007; rpt. 1979), 169.
[13] The forces allied against the camps were Pierre Gemayel's
Kataeb (Phalangist) militia, Camille Chamoun's National Liberal
Party, Father Sharbel Kassis' Order of the Maronite Monks, Suleiman
Franjieh's Barakat Army, and Abu Arz's Guards of the Cedars. Some
of the weapons were supplied by the U.S. as a proxy for the Zionist
state. See Tal Al-Zaatar: The Fight Against Fascism. (Beirut:
Palestine Liberation Organization, n.d.). Also see Liana Badr's
novel, which depicts the massacre with the details of an eyewitness
account. Eye of the Mirror. Trans. Samira Kawar. (Reading: Garnet
Publishing, 2008).
[14] Mohammad Ali Khalidi, Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon 2001,
16. The agreement also gave Palestinians more autonomy stating that
"'Palestinians currently residing in Lebanon' had the 'right to
work, residence, and movement.' It also called for the 'formation
of local committees composed of Palestinians in the camps to care
for the interests of Palestinians residing in these camps in
cooperation with the local Lebanese authorities within the
framework of Lebanese sovereignty.'" Ibid.
[15] Rosemary Sayigh, Too Many Enemies, 207.
[16] Semour M. Hersh, "The Redirection." The New Yorker. (March 5,
2007).
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all.
[17] See Rania Masri and Jackson Allers, "'They May Accept Us for a
Day or two But for How Long?'" Electronic Intifada. (May 25, 2007).
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6952.shtml.
[18] Marcy Newman, "Aid for Nahr al-Bared." Electronic Intifada.
(May 25, 2007).
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6949.shtml.
[19]
Marcy Newman, "Letter from a Palestinian Camp." Electronic
Intifada. (June 18, 2007).
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7039.shtml.
[20] Anand Gopal and Saseen Kawzally, "'Army Torturing Palestinian
Refugees.'" Inter Press Service. (August 13, 2007).
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38871.
[21] See Rania Masri, "Where Do I Stand?" Counter Currents. (June
7, 2007). http://www.countercurrents.org/masri070607.htm.
[22] For historical context on this see Muhammad Ali Khalidi and
Diane Riskedahl, "The Road to Nahr al-Barid: Lebanese Political
Discourse and Palestinian Civil Rights." Middle East Report 244
(Fall 2007).
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer244/khalidi_riskedahl.html.
[23] The break down was as follows: Bourj el-Barjneh 336 families,
Shatila 408 families, Mar Elias 8 families, Ein el-Helweh 56
families, Bourj el-Shmali 35 families, El-Buss 20 families, and
Rashidiyeh 59 families.
[24] See Marcy Newman, "Letter from a Palestinian Camp." Electronic
Intifada. (June 18, 2007).
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7039.shtml.
[25] See Tamara Keblaoui, "Open Letter to PM Siniora." Electronic
Intifada. (October 30, 2007).
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9069.shtml.
[26] See Adam Ramadan, "Destroying Nahr el-Bared: Sovereignty and
Urbicide in the Space of Exception." Political Geography 28 (2009):
153-163.
[27] The material regarding the current situation in the camp is
from an interview with Yasmine Moor, Monitoring & Evaluation
Department, UNRWA, (May 9, 2010). An independent team of
journalists have been creating documentary films that highlight all
of these new violations and problems facing the people of Nahr
el-Bared since their return to the camp. See
http://a-films.blogspot.com/.
[28] Recently this played out over the discovery of ancient ruins
beneath the camp which led to yet another stalling of
reconstruction. See Ray Smith, "Nahr el-Bared Reconstruction Delays
Protested." Electronic Intifada. (October 1, 2009).
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10804.shtml.
[29] Material regarding reconstruction is from an interview with
Lyne Jabri and Ismael Sheikh Hassan, Nahr el Bared Reconstruction
Committee, (May 10, 2010).
[30] On reconstruction and other issues facing residents of the
camp see http://albared.wordpress.com/.
[31] Ibid. Also see
http://www.assafir.com/Article.aspx?EditionId=1539&articleId=1140&ChannelId=35822&Author=%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B9%D9%8A%D9%84%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%8A%D8%AE%20%D8%AD%D8%B3%D9%86.
[32] Interview with Melad Salameh, (September 26, 2009).
[33] See Ahmed Moor and Dean Sharp, "Lebanese Army Encircling
Baddawi Refugee Camp." Electronic Intifada. (March 26, 2010).
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11166.shtml.
[34] The material regarding the current situation in Beddawi is
from an interview with Yasmine Moor, Monitoring & Evaluation
Department, UNRWA, (May 9, 2010).
[35] See "US Gives $20 Million to Rebuild Lebanon Refugee Camp."
AFP. (May 14, 2010).
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ic2Lm-IqNXjQ7RVXEsvQ4oEQQhrA.
[36] See http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=576.
[37] For one example of USAID as an imperial project see Nadia
Hijab and Jesse Rosenfeld, "Palestinian Roads: Cementing Statehood,
or Israeli Annexation?" The Nation. (April 30, 2010).
http://www.thenation.com/article/palestinian-roads-cementing-statehood-or-israeli-annexation?page=full.