A two-fold crisis for Palestinians

Immediately after the Trump administration began to promote its “deal of the century,” Palestinian refugees took center stage once more. Although the US plan is yet to be fully revealed, early indications suggest it sidelines Jerusalem entirely from any future agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Another component of Trump’s “deal” is to resolve the issue of refugees without their repatriation and without respecting international law, especially UN Resolution 194, which calls for the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were driven out from their homes in historic Palestine in 1948, as well as their descendants.

Many news reports have been pointing to an elaborate American plot to downgrade the status of refugees, to argue against UN figures indicating their actual numbers, and to choke off the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from badly needed funds.

Lebanon has been a major platform for the ongoing campaign targeting Palestinian refugees, particularly because the refugee population in that country is significant in terms of numbers.

There appears to be an active plan, involving several parties, to deprive Lebanon’s Palestinian population of their refugee status and to circumvent the right of return.

Obviously, without refugees collectively demanding such a right, the issue could move from being an urgent, tangible demand into a sentimental one that is impossible to achieve. This is why the depopulation of Lebanon’s refugee camps should worry Palestinians more than any other issue at the moment.

I spoke to Samaa Abu Sharar, the director of the Majed Abu Sharar Media Foundation. She said the nature of the conversation among refugees has changed in recent years. In the past, “almost everybody from young to old spoke about their wish of returning to Palestine one day; at present the majority, particularly the youth, only express one wish: To leave for any other country that would receive them.”

It is common knowledge that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are marginalized and mistreated the most compared to other refugee populations in the Middle East.

Left hopeless, with a life of neglect and utter misery, Palestinian refugees have persisted for many years, driven by the hope of going back to their homeland one day. But the refugees are no longer a priority for the Palestinian leadership.

The situation has worsened. With the Syrian war, tens of thousands more refugees have flooded the camps.

There is no denial about an influx of Palestinian refugees wanting to leave Lebanon. Some have done so successfully, only to find themselves contending with the misery of a new refugee status in Europe. Expectedly, some have returned.

“There is more than one organized network that facilitates the emigration of Palestinians, at prices that have recently gone down to make it more accessible to a larger number of people,” Abu Sharar told me. The conclusion that many of these young men and women now draw is that “there is no future for them in Lebanon,” she added.

Relegating their plight until final-status negotiations, a pipe dream that was never actualized, is now leading to a two-fold crisis: The worsening suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, and the systematic destruction of one of the main pillars of Palestinian refugees, the right of return.