From the BADIL Refugee Survey 2008-2009: Secondary Forced Displacement in Host Countries - An Overview
Many Palestinians who sought refuge outside their homeland experienced further forced displacement. With their right to a nationality, identity and travel document denied by Israel, they became stateless refugees[1] who have been particularly vulnerable to the impacts of armed conflicts and human rights violations in their respective host countries.
In the 1950s, Arab Gulf oil-producing states expelled striking
Palestinian workers. When factions within the PLO challenged the
power of the Hashemite Kingdom in 1970, vast numbers of
Palestinians were expelled (between 18,000 and 20,000) and their
camps demolished. This war, known as “Black September”, also
resulted in the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan and its relocation
to Lebanon.
In south Lebanon, Israeli warplanes bombed and destroyed the al-Nabatiya refugee camp near the city of al-Nabatiya in 1974. Refugees were displaced to Ein al-Hilwe refugee camp and other camps in Beirut. Two years later, right-wing Lebanese Christian militias backed by Syrian army reinforcements razed Tel e-Za’tar (Dekwana) and Jisr al-Basha refugee camps in eastern Beirut, massacring an estimated 2000 people.[2] Refugees were displaced yet again to Ein al-Hilwe and other Beirut camps. The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon led to the massacre of several thousand Palestinian refugees in the Beirut refugee camp of Shatila and the adjacent neighborhood of Sabra, by Israeli-allied Christian Phalangists in September 1982. Palestinian refugees were also displaced as a result of the “war of the camps” (1985–87) between the Lebanese army and PLO forces that remained after the departure of the PLO.[3]
According to UNRWA estimates, during the 1980s and following
Israel’s military invasion of Lebanon, 57 percent of homes in the
eight refugee camps in the Beirut, Saida and Tyre areas were
destroyed, with another 36 percent damaged in aerial bombardment,
ground fighting, and subsequent bulldozing. The vast scale of the
damage affected some 73,500 refugees – 90 percent of the camp
population in those areas.
Close to 200,000 Palestinian refugees were displaced and some
30,000 killed between 1982 and the late 1980s, as a result of
Israel’s invasion, the departure of the PLO forces (14,000) to
Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Syria, and the subsequent civil
war.[4] Since the 1980s, it is
estimated that about 100,000 Palestinians have emigrated from
Lebanon or sought protection from persecution in the Gulf countries
and Northern Europe, mainly in Germany, Sweden and
Denmark.[5]
In Kuwait, during the 1991 Gulf War, most of the Palestinian
population (350,000 –400,000) was forced to leave the country as
collective punishment for PLO support for Iraq. Most Palestinians
in Kuwait were UNRWA-registered 1948 refugees with Jordanian
passports or Egyptian travel documents. Palestinians were mainly
displaced to Jordan (250,000–280,000) and Iraq (2,000). Those with
residency status in the OPT (30,000–40,000) were able to return.
The PLO estimated that only some 27,000 Palestinians remained in
Kuwait.[6]
In 1994, Libya announced its intention to expel Palestinians
(35,000) as an expression of its dissatisfaction with the Oslo
peace process. Measures taken by the Libyan government included
non-renewal of Palestinian residency permits and cancellation of
valid ones. In September 1995, Libyan President Qaddafi expelled
thousands of Palestinians from Libya on ships and trucks. Some were
allowed entry into Jordan, the OPT, Syria and Lebanon, but many who
had no valid travel documents were left stranded in extremely harsh
conditions in the Saloum refugee camp on the border between Egypt
and Libya. In January 1997, the Libyan parliament announced that
Palestinians who had been stranded for 16 months at the Egyptian
border could return to Libya.[7]
In Iraq, the situation of Palestinian refugees has dramatically
deteriorated since 2003 as a result of the U.S.-led war and
occupation. Palestinian refugees are not only victims of the
general violence, but are also persecuted on grounds of
nationality. Persecution has taken the form of eviction from their
homes, arbitrary detention, kidnapping, torture, rape, and
extra-judicial killings. The U.S./U.K. forces and the Iraqi
authorities are unable or unwilling to protect Palestinian refugees
in Iraq. Of a population estimated at 34,000 persons in 2003, over
15,000 have left Iraq. The whereabouts and legal status of those
who have fled remain largely unknown to UN agencies because of the
difficulties of working in Iraq, as well as financial constraints.
Some Palestinian refugees have been reported by UNHCR offices in
locations as far a field as India and Thailand.
Palestinians fleeing the violence of Iraq were denied entry to
Syria and Jordan, except for a small group placed in al Hol camp
(340 people) just inside the Syrian border. A second group of 940
refugees ended up in a camp in the seven kilometer long
no-man’s-land between Syria and Iraq at al Tanf, while a third
group of 1,750 was blocked from entering this zone and were placed
in a camp at al Waleed, on the Iraqi side of the
border.[8] By 2008, more than 2,600
Palestinian refugees from Iraq were still stranded in these camps.
Another 4,000 are believed to be living in Damascus illegally after
entering the country using forged
passports.[9]
In April 2008, the Chilean government began resettling 116
Palestinians from the al-Tanf camp.[10]
In 2008 the PLO also reached a tri-partite humanitarian relocation
agreement with UNHCR and the Sudanese government as a temporary
solution for the plight of Palestinians in the camps of al Tanf and
al Waleed. The agreement is yet to be implemented. In July 2009,
the U.S. State Department confirmed that it would resettle 1,350
Palestinian refugees from Iraq to begin that
fall.[11] About 10,000 Palestinian
refugees, mainly the most vulnerable who are unable to flee, are
believed to have remained in Baghdad. Other Palestinian refugees
fleeing Iraq have been resettled in Iceland and Sweden.
Israel’s war with Lebanon in the summer of 2006 (12 July - 14
August) led to inflows and outflows of displaced persons from
Palestinian refugee camps. Although the camps were not generally
directly targeted, on many occasions bombing and shelling took
place in the immediate vicinity of the
camps.[12] Moreover, as many as 25,000
Palestinian refugees residing outside the camps in the southern
villages near the Israeli border faced the same conditions as the
Lebanese population.[13] Around 16,000
Palestinian refugees were displaced both within Lebanon and to
neighboring countries.[14] The
Palestinian refugee camps of Rashidieh, al-Buss, Burj al-Shamali,
Mieh Mieh, and Ein el-Hilweh hosted internally displaced Lebanese
and Palestinians.[15] The majority of
these IDPs returned to their homes after the end of hostilities.
The war exacerbated the vulnerability of Palestinian
refugees.[16]
Between May and September 2007, the Nahr el Bared refugee camp in
northern Lebanon was destroyed displacing some 31,400 Palestinian
refugees.[17] 105 days of fighting
between the fundamentalist Fateh al Islam group and the Lebanese
army leveled most of the camp, including entire residential blocks,
commercial properties, mosques, UNRWA facilities, water reservoirs,
sewage and electricity networks, roads and telephone lines. The
majority of families fleeing the conflict sought refuge in and
around the Beddawi refugee camp on the outskirts of Tripoli, nearly
doubling this camp’s population
overnight.[18] Nearly 1,000 families
were scattered elsewhere throughout
Lebanon.[19]
The destruction of the camp on the 60th year of the Nakba
engendered comparisons amongst the refugee population that it had
experienced a "second Nakba" losing everything their families had
worked for over six decades.[20] UNRWA
rebuilding efforts are expected to be complete by mid-2011.
----------------------------------------------------
[1] UNRWAPR, Statistical Bulletin Lebanon , May 1950- June 1951, p:
14A, 14A-B
[2] -Idem.Ibid , p: 13
[3] -
زراقط مهى ، المخيمات الفلسطينية في لبنان ، في المخيمات الفلسطينية
في لبنان ، واقع بائس يبحث عن حلول ، بطاقة تعريف ، مركز عصام فارس
للشؤون اللبنانية ، ايلول 2009 .ص:28 .
[4]
-[4] أحمد محمود، معين، الفلسطينيون في لبنان:الواقع الاجتماعي، دار
إبن خلدون، بيروت، 1973 ص:32.
[5] -
[5] العلي محمود ، الواقع الاجتماعي للاجئين الفلسطينيين في لبنان ،
التدامج والتمايز، 1948 -2005."بيروت ، مركز باحث للدراسات، 2009 ،
ص:38.
[6] 4
-Hudson, Michael, Palestinian & Lebanon the Common Story, Journal
of Refugee Studies, No: 3. May 1988. p: 245
[7]
عبدالله، رضوان، اللاجئون الفلسطينيون، أوضاعهم، معاناتهم، حقوقهم،
مطبعة خيزران، لبنان، ط1/2002، ص:20.
[8]
-الأنروا- بيروت ، وضاع المهجرين الفلسطينيين في لبنان _ورشة عمل
/صيدا في 22 آذار 1990 ،ص:27 .
[9] -
Ralp Gadban , in Palestinian Refugees in Europe and
Challenges of adaptation and identity : summary report of workshop
on Palestinian refugees', communities in Europe .St Antony college
university of Oxford,
[1] See, for example: Closing Protection Gaps. Handbook
on Protection of Palestinian Refugees in States Signatories of the
1951 Refugee Convention, BADIL Resource Center, August 2005, p.
122-125. See also: Chapter Three
[2] Cobban, Helena, The Palestinian Liberation
Organisation: People, Power, and Politics, Cambridge University
Press, (1984) p. 142
[3] A 1988 survey of 4,470 displaced Palestinian
families found that the majority were displaced because of the
1985–1987 “war of the camps”, and that 75% of them have been forced
from their house three or more times. See Jaber Suleiman,
“Marginalised Community: The case of Palestinian Refugees in
Lebanon”, United Kingdom: Development Research Centre on Migration
Globalisation and Poverty, April 2006, p. 6.
[4] Suheil al-Natour, Awda’ al-Sha’ab al Falastini fi
Lubnan [Arabic], Beirut: Dar al-Takadum al-Arabi, 1993; and
Al-Mohajjarun al-Falastinyoun fi Lubnan [Arabic], Beirut: Ajial,
2003.
[5] Jaber Suleiman, “Marginalised Community: The Case of
Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon”, p. 6, cited in Mohamed Dorai,
“Palestinian Emigration from Lebanon to Northern Europe: Refugees,
Networks, and Transitional Practices,” Refugee, 21:2, February
2003.
[6] UNRWA announced that between August 1990 and March
1991, approximately 250,000 persons holding Jordanian passports
arrived in Jordan, of whom the majority were registered refugees or
of Palestinian origin. See Report of the Commissioner-General of
the United Nations for Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East, A/46/13, 20 June, 1991. The Jordanian
government estimates that 280,000 persons holding Jordanian
passports had entered Jordan by the end of the Gulf War. Shaml
Palestinian Disapora and Refugee Centre estimates that between
30–40,000 Palestinians were able to enter the OPT. Research Report
No. 6, Ramallah: Shaml.
[7] Shaml Newsletter No. 6, February 1997. Also see
Shaml Newsletter No. 1, December 1995.
[8] For more on the status of Palestinian refugees
displaced as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, see, "From Fast
Death to Slow Death: Palestinian Refugees from Iraq Trapped
on the Syria-Iraq Border", Summary Report of an International NGO
Delegation, November 20, 2008.
[9] "Al Tanf Camp Trauma Continues for Palestinians
Fleeing Iraq", April 2008 AI Index: MDE 14/012/2008. Palestinian
refugees form Iraq who are present in Syrian territory are
regularly picked up by Syrian security forces and transferred to
the al Tanf camp.
[10] "Palestine refugees from Iraq resettled in Chile",
The Electronic Intifada, 8 April 2008.
[11] "Risking Israel's ire, U.S. takes 1,350 Palestinian
refugees" Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor 7 July,
2009.
[12] On three occasions the refugee camp of Ein
el-Hilweh was hit by Israeli bombardments and one member of UNRWA
staff, as well as two civilians were killed. See "UNRWA Strongly
Condemns the Killing of its Staff Member", UNRWA Lebanon Field
Office, Beirut, 15 August, 2006.
[13] UNRWA, “The Situation of Palestine Refugees in
South Lebanon,” 15 August 2006.
[14] UNRWA, Situation Report, 9 August 2006.
[15] See Zeidan, Mahmoud, “30 Days in Paradise! The role
of Palestinian Refugees in Assisting Lebanese Displaced Persons
during the Last Israeli War on Lebanon,” al Majdal, Issue 30–31
(Summer–Fall 2006), p. 16.
[16] “War exacerbates Palestine refugee conditions –
Report,” IRIN News, 17 September, 2006.
[17] "Internally displaced Persons from Nahr el Bared
Camp as of 7 August 2007" UNRWA August 2007 found at:
http://www.unrwa-lebanon.org/nle/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/idps20070807.xls
[18] "Nahr el-Bared Palestine Refugee Camp UNRWA Relief,
Recovery and Reconstruction Framework 2008-2011", UNRWA Publication
May 2008, p. 5
[19] Ibid. See table p.7
[20] "Boos as Lebanon camp is rebuilt", Natalia
Antelava, BBC News, Lebanon 10 March, 2009.