Palestinians In Lebanon Research Articles

Restricting access to employment as a human rights violation: a case study of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

ABSTRACT Palestinian refugees in Lebanon face many human rights violations, including heavy restrictions of the right to employment. While the detrimental ramifications of the lack of access to employment for Palestinian refugees have been well documented in policy reports and scholarship, few have assessed Palestinian refugees’ perspectives on this issue. Our study offers insights on Palestinian refugees’ perceptions of restricted employment access, especially as it pertains to their standard of living, emotional and mental well-being, interpretation of the right to work, and integration into Lebanese society. Using a mixed-methods study design with a heavy qualitative component, we assess Palestinian’s perceptions and examine the consequences of work restrictions for the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon. Our results indicate that Palestinian refugees’ restricted access to employment negatively affects their everyday life, with some nuances regarding work inside and outside of refugee camps. Further, unlike pervasive findings in the literature stating that lack of access to high-level occupations negatively impacts refugees, we found that availability of any employment is considered positive by the participants in our study. Further, we found that several of the participants used human rights language in their responses, highlighting that there is awareness of employment as a human right.

Conflicted presence: The many arrivals of Palestinians in Lebanon

Abstract No refugee arrival is ever a single event. Arrival repeats, but it is not the same each time. Each arrival is shaped by previous experience as well as future expectation. Considering the multiple layers that constitute refugee arrival is thus necessary to understand such experiences. Palestinians, who have experienced many arrivals, offer an instructive case. This article focuses on Lebanon, where Palestinian presence has always been challenged, and challenging. And this presence has also undergone many changes over the years. Approaching presence through the lens of the built environment, it explores how the construction, inhabitation, and destruction of buildings change over time and are historically layered. The article takes up three distinct moments in Palestinian history in Lebanon: (1) the early years/first arrival; (2) the time of revolution [thawra]; and (3) rebuilding after destruction by Israeli invasion and the Lebanese civil war. Together, these snapshots of different layers in cumulative arrival offer a textured image of Palestinian presence. An exploration of these layers shows that the formal recognition that derives from hereness is often the smaller part of its impact. Presence has a power that regularly defies the discursive, legal, and even affective limits that people and governments seek to put on it.

Practical Ideology in Militant Organizations

AbstractIdeology shapes militant recruitment, organization, and conflict behavior. Existing research assumes doctrinal consistency, top-down socialization of adherents, and clear links between formal ideology and political action. But it has long been recognized that ideological commitments do not flow unaltered from overarching cleavages or elite narratives; they are uneven, contingent, fraught with tension, and often ambivalent. What work does ideology do in militant groups if it is not deeply studied, internalized, or sincerely believed? How can scholars explain collective commitment, affinity, and behavioral outcomes among militants who clearly associate themselves with a group, but who may not consistently (or ever) be true believers or committed ideologues? I argue that practical ideologies—sets of quotidian principles, ideas, and social heuristics that reflect relational worldviews rather than specific published political doctrines, positions, platforms, or plans—play a key role in militant socialization through everyday practices. Ethnographic evidence gained from fieldwork among Palestinians in Lebanon demonstrates how militants and affiliates render ideas about ideological closeness and distance accessible through emotional, intellectual, and moral appeals. This approach reaffirms the role of discourse and narrative in creating informal mechanisms of militant socialization without expressly invoking formal doctrine.

An Old Diaspora: Histories of Militancy by Palestinians with a Northeastern Accent

Most of the Palestinians who arrived in the cities of Northeastern Brazil came during the time of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, especially after the travels of Emperor Dom Pedro II. The arrival of Palestinians before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 made many Palestinians and their descendants indifferent to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The situation changed in the 1980s as a result of the worsening situation of Palestinians in Lebanon, when the Palestine-Brazil Cultural Center was established in the city of Olinda, Pernambuco, and the deputy Raymundo Asfora made many speeches in defense of the Palestinian cause. These militant actions served as an inspiration for new generations of Palestinians born in Brazil. A maioria dos palestinos que chegaram à algumas cidades do nordeste brasileiro vieram durante a vigência do Império Turco Otomano, em pleno século XIX, sobretudo após as viagens do imperador do Brasil, Dom Pedro II ao Oriente Médio. A chegada dos palestinos antes da fundação do Estado de Israel (1948) foi determinante para que muitos palestinos e descentes fossem indiferentes ao conflito Israel-Palestina. A situação mudou, mais tarde, na década de 1980, durante o agravamento da situação dos palestinos no Líbano. Foi inaugurado o Centro Cultural Palestina-Brasil na cidade de Olinda, PE, e o deputado Raymundo Asfora realizava muitos discursos públicos em defesa da causa palestina. Essas ações militantes serviram de inspiração para as novas gerações de palestinos nascidos no Brasil.

The Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon Post 1990: Dilemmas of Survival and Return to Palestine

This article addresses the issue of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their camps, their resistance, and the challenges they have been facing “as refugees” to survive in the deeply divided state of Lebanon and to return to Palestine. Currently there are about 450,000 Palestinian refugees scattered among 12 official and recognized Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon as well as many refugee gatherings; this number is part of the 6 million Palestinian refugees who are scattered in the world as a result of the establishment of the Zionist entity in 1948. However, on December 11, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly issued the UN resolution 194, during its third session, which stipulated that Palestinians have the right of return to their homes in Palestine. The Palestinian right of return is a Right and therefore it is not negotiable and cannot be compromised under any condition and/or circumstance. There have been continual attempts and proposals to terminate this Palestinian right of return to historic Palestine. To stop these toxic proposals from reaching their goals and to achieve their strategic goal, the Palestinian resistance has the legitimate right to use any means necessary, including armed struggle against the occupiers. The Palestinians in Lebanon are part of this process and they have been struggling on all levels to achieve their civil and human rights in order to improve their social and economic conditions in their refugee camps. Furthermore, the Palestinians have the legitimate right to continue their national struggle against Israel, which is the only way for the Palestinians to achieve their national goal for total liberation. However, there have been additional challenges affecting the Palestinians and their refugee camps in Lebanon post 1990; by the end of the Lebanese Civil War, the Palestinian refugee camps witnessed the emergence and growth of takfiri groups. Consequently, the Palestinian refugees have been sandwiched between oppressive Lebanese rules and the rise of the takfiris inside the camps. The article attempts to answer the following questions: What are the challenges affecting the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon? How can the Palestinians protect their identity from erasure and achieve their right of return to Palestine? Which internal and external groups currently control the camps? In what ways has takfiri ideology impacted the Palestinian identity? How can the Palestinian refugees and their camps survive under such conditions?

Educational attainment and economic participation in Palestinian women living in Lebanon: analysis of data from the Labour Force Survey among Palestinian refugees

BackgroundIn Arab societies, women have made advances in educational attainment but continue to show very low rates of economic participation. This occurrence has been labelled the sex-education-work paradox. We aimed to explore this paradox among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and assessed wage differences between Palestinian men and women at every educational level. MethodsWe used data from the most recent International Labour Organizations' Labour Force Survey of Palestinians in Lebanon (2012). The survey was implemented in all Palestinian refugee camps and gatherings across Lebanon, yielding a sample size of 2600 households and 7212 individuals. We tested sex differences in education, work, and wages using bivariate and multivariate methods, using SPSS version 18. FindingsWe included data for 2020 employed men and 444 employed women in this study. Although Palestinian women had a better educational profile than did Palestinian men, they had a very low rate of economic participation (15% overall, and 10% in married women). Employed Palestinian women had an advantage to men with respect to occupational status (29% were professionals and managers compared with 8% men) and job security (73% women earned monthly wages compared with 37% men), but earned lower wages than men at every educational level. Average sex wage differences increased gradually with increasing education, ranging from US$94·6 for primary education (0–6 years), to $132·6 for complementary education (6–9 years), to $198 for those with a secondary education (9–12 years). The results of linear regression analysis showed, after adjusting for age, education, and occupation, that women earned significantly lower wages than men (β=137; p<0·0001). InterpretationThe results accord with the persistence of the sex-education-work paradox among Palestinians in Lebanon. The findings also show a sex-wage paradox, whereby, with increasing education, women earn lower wages than men do. Palestinian women are doubly disadvantaged in Lebanon: discriminatory policies that negatively affect all Palestinian workers (eg, barring them from working in more than 60 managerial and professional jobs) intersected with sex social and cultural norms to exert a cumulative effect on their economic wellbeing. FundingInternational Labour Organization, the European Union.

The Sunni Tragedy in the Middle East

Northern Lebanon, the mountainous terrain bordering Syria and the coastalplain centered on the city of Tripoli with its nearly 130,000 residents, has longbeen the heartland of the country’s Sunni Arabs, along with the old scholasticand population hub in the southern city of Sidon. The outbreak of mass popularprotests and eventually armed rebellion in neighboring Syria againstBashar al-Asad’s government in the spring of 2011, and that country’s continuingdescent into an increasingly violent and sectarian civil war, has had aprofound effect upon Lebanon, particularly in the north, for both geographicaland demographic reasons. First, northern Lebanon borders strategic areas ofcentral-western Syria (e.g., the town of al-Qusayr) and is located just south ofthe major Syrian port city of Tartus. Second, the north’s population includessignificant minority communities of Christians and Alawis, the latter of whichare largely aligned politically with Damascus. These factors have made theborder regions particularly dangerous, for while the Lebanese army attemptsto maintain control of the country’s territory, Iran-aligned Hizbullah poursfighters and military supplies into Syria and militant Sunni groups (e.g., ISISand Jabhat Fath al-Sham [JFS]) seek to establish a foothold in Lebanon fromwhich they can pursue their anti-Asad campaign.Bernard Rougier is uniquely placed to write about the contemporary historyand complex web of politics among Lebanon’s Sunni factions and particularlythe rise of jihadi militancy among some of its segments. The bookunder review, like Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam among Palestiniansin Lebanon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), isbased upon extensive in-country fieldwork and interviews beginning in theearly 2000s and ending in 2014. It provides a fascinating and nuancedoverview of jihadism’s rise as a viable avenue of political frustration and expressionin the wider milieu of Lebanon’s intra-Sunni socio-political competitionand a fast-changing regional situation.Rougier argues that the contentious political disputes and competitionamong the country’s mainstream Sunni political figures (e.g., the al-Haririfamily), as well as the impact of Syrian control of large parts of Lebanon between1976 and 2005 and ensuing power vacuum after its withdrawal, enabledthe emergence of jihadi militancy. Northern Lebanon also became a center ofcompetition among regional actors through their local allies, which pitted ...

Commemorative Economies and the Politics of Solidarity in Shatila Camp

This article examines the politics of Nakba commemoration in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and the instrumentalization of memories of the 1948 expulsion by NGOs and factions. It considers the role eyewitness accounts of the 1948 expulsion play in the production of Palestinian nationalism in exile, as well as the transformations occurring in the way younger generations relate to this critical event. It suggests that Palestine studies may have overemphasized the conceptual potency of nationalist narratives of the Nakba, and that their discursive prominence today more often reflects their role in securing local and international visibility, patronage, and resources than their continuing power to infuse the present and future with meaning for the refugees themselves.

Book Review: Palestinians in Lebanon: Refugees Living with Long-Term Displacement

A review of the book Palestinians in Lebanon: Refugees Living with Long-Term Displacement, by Rebecca Roberts is presented.

Palestinians in Lebanon: Refugees Living with Long-Term Displacement. By Rebecca Roberts.

Palestinians in Lebanon: Refugees Living with Long-Term Displacement. By Rebecca Roberts.

Human (in)security: Palestinian perceptions of security in and around the refugee camps in Lebanon

Based upon over 20 hours of focus groups and in-depth interviews with diverse representation from three Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the authors analyse Palestinian perceptions of both Lebanese and Palestinian security institutions, detailing the ways in which conventional, state-centric approaches to security by both parties have been insufficient. Special attention is paid to the new security regime in the Nahr al-Bared camp, which was destroyed in 2007 during a protracted battle between the Lebanese army and the militant Islamist group Fatah al-Islam. This is because the Government of Lebanon has made clear its intention that this regime serve as a model for the country's other 11 camps. Ultimately, the authors argue, Palestinian human security is inextricably linked to Lebanese sovereignty and national security, and the improvement of Palestinian human security will yield tangible security benefits for Lebanese and Palestinians alike. Rather than presume to speak on behalf of all Palestinians in Lebanon, the authors have instead opted to present detailed—and sometimes contradictory—quotations from Palestinians interviewed on such subjects as arms, violent extremism, Lebanese–Palestinian relations and the protection of human rights.

Speaking Palestinian: An Interview with Rosemary Sayigh

This interview is part of a longer conversation that independent researcher Mayssun Soukarieh conducted with Rosemary Sayigh in Beirut during the summer of 2008. Sayigh, an anthropologist, oral historian, and researcher, was born in Birmingham in the United Kingdom and moved to Beirut in 1953, where she married the Palestinian economist Yusif Sayigh. She earned her master's degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1970 and was awarded a PhD from Hull University in Yorkshire in 1994. Since coming to Beirut fifty-six years ago, Sayigh has dedicated her life to writing and advocating for the Palestinians in Lebanon and elsewhere. She is the author of two groundbreaking books: Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries; A People's History (Zed Books, 1979) and Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian Experience in Lebanon (Zed Books, 1993). Although these conversations focused on Sayigh's scholarly work rather than her personal history, it became clear that the two are inextricably linked.

Review: Everyday Jihad: the rise of militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon, by Bernard Rougier, and translated by Pascale Ghazaleh

Review: Everyday Jihad: the rise of militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon, by Bernard Rougier, and translated by Pascale Ghazaleh

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An ethnographic study of the consequences of social and structural forces on children: the case of two low-income Beirut suburbs

This ethnographic study of two low-income suburban communities in Beirut highlights the negative impacts that wider social circumstances can have on the young. The two communities of interest are a Palestinian refugee camp and another community in the suburbs of Beirut where displaced families and daily labourers reside. Using observations and in-depth interviews with residents and key informants in these communities over a period of four months, a research team obtained an inside view of the residents’ experiences. State political and economic policies place restrictions on work and mobility for the Palestinians in Lebanon and allow the religious sects to regulate civil life for the Lebanese. This paper discusses how, as a result of these and other difficult conditions, children and youth face consequences that can include illegal status, dropping out of school, abuse, child labour and substance abuse. Policies to alleviate these outcomes need to address the root causes situated within these structural forces.

The Palestinians in Lebanon: New Restrictions on Property Ownership

It is estimated that there are some 373,440 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, comprising some 10 per cent of the total refugee population registered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Despite the efforts of UNRWA in the health and educational fields their fate is, perhaps, the most uncertain and tragic of all the Palestinian refugees, considering the extent of their suffering, their deprivation of human rights, and the absence of any international, Arab or Palestinian body to care for them. This article investigates the new legal restrictions imposed on property-ownership by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, which adds further to their miserable conditions.

The politics of refugees’ non integration: the dilemma of Palestinians in Lebanon

This study was designed to investigate Lebanese respondent’s attitudes toward an imposed Palestinian settlement in the country. Specifically, the study focuses on two research questions: (a) What is the extent of support for an imposed settlement and its underlying dimensions? That is, the belief that such a policy would damage Lebanese society, that it would lead to a renewal of the civil war and that it would lead to intergroup conflict; and (b) What are the predictors of these attitudes? The results based on a sample of 1,073 respondents indicated a discrepancy between attitudes toward resettlement and its underlying dimensions. Furthermore, the concept of “tolerance for Palestinians” and sectarian affiliation were found to be significant predictors of all the resettlement variables. The implications of these findings for Lebanon are discussed.

Palestinian Emigration from Lebanon to Northern Europe: Refugees, Networks, and Transnational Practices

Palestinians in Lebanon are one of the most important communities living in the Middle East, with nearly 350,000 refugees according to UNRWA figures. Since the 1980s about 100,000 Palestinians have emigrated from Lebanon to the Gulf countries and northern Europe, mainly Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. The Palestinian case leads us to reconsider the classical distinction between forced and voluntary migration. Migration has to be considered not only as forced, but also as the result of new forms of transnational solidarity between the different scattered Palestinian communities. This paper aims to demonstrate how refugee communities, like Palestinians, but also Kurds or Eritreans, use their social capital (i.e., solidarity networks) in order to adapt to new situations with strong constraints and to develop new forms of transnational solidarities.

Lebanese perceptions of the Palestinians in Lebanon: case studies

The issue of the permanent settlement of Palestinians in Lebanon ( tawteen ) has great political and social resonance for all Lebanese, regardless of their sectarian background. To understand the processes by which the issue is articulated in Lebanese political discourse, this article examines two cases-a proposed housing project for displaced Palestinians, and the aftermath of Libya's expulsion of Palestinians-on which Lebanese attitudes to the Palestinian presence, their recollection of the civil war, and their concerns for the future converged. The author critically examines how these issues came to have such great, perhaps disproportionate, importance in Lebanon and explains how opposition to tawteen has become a political stand on which the Lebanese public is united

Permanent settlement of Palestinians in Lebanon: a recipe for conflict

Permanent settlement of Palestinians in Lebanon: a recipe for conflict