From Refugees to Minority: Palestinians in Post-War LebanonAuthor(s): Julie PeteetSource: Middle East Report, No. 200, Minorities in the Middle East: Power and the Politics ofDifference (Jul. - Sep., 1996), pp. 27-30Published by: Middle East Research and Information ProjectStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3013265 .Accessed: 23/09/2011 11:29

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From Refugees to Minority

Palestinians in Post-War Lebanon

Julie Peteet

By seeking to define themselves as a minority, Palestinians are attempting both to accommodate their isolation

from the larger Palestinian context and protest their powerlessness and restricted daily lives in the local Lebanese

context. Rather than a celebration of difference, this is a strategy for survival in an otherwise desperate situation.

s Lebanon's elite strategizes post-war reconstruction and national reconciliation, the future of the Pales?

tinian community in the country hinges on the outcome of the Arab-Israeli peace talks, particularly the multilat? eral talks on refugees.1 Popular sentiment holds that

"peace" will not produce the conditions for return or com?

pensation. In the meantime, Palestinians living in camps in Lebanon face insurmountable odds, including poverty, unemployment and political disenfranchisement.

Palestinian identity is increasingly fragmented and

highly nuanced around differences in geography, experi? ence and legal status. Abandoned by the peace process, Palestinians in Lebanon are rethinking their place in both the Lebanese and Palestinian national orders. In Leba?

non, the Palestinian community is contending with its

marginalization by seeking to redefine itself as a legal minority. The process is simultaneously one of accommo? dation in seeking a minority status for a distinctly Palestinian presence in Lebanon and a form of resistance

against further displacement to other countries and in? tensified exclusion from Lebanese public life. Thus

minority status emerges not from isolation but from the

very specificity of interaction with the broader economic, social and political environment.

In this context, marginalization takes a number of forms and is often linked to exclusion and violence. There is the spatial dimension: confinement to well-demarcated, bounded and surveilled camps. Institutional

marginalization includes exclusion from public institu? tions of social life and from the legal rights and protections the state affords its citizens. Economic marginalization is accomplished by extremely restrictive options for em?

ployment and the near-total absence of social welfare

provisions, the latter problem compounded by cuts in UNRWA resources and services. There is also an experi? ential dimension marked by negativeness, fear and

apprehension and a generalized awareness of self and com?

munity as the object of scorn and hostility. Finally, there is a discursive dimension in which the generic Palestin-

Julie Peteet is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Louisville, KY and author of Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (Columbia University Press, 1991).

Middle East Report ? July-September 1996

ian is cast as trouble-maker and the cause of Lebanon's

post-war woes. What is the relationship between minority status and

marginalization? Because no national census has been conducted in Lebanon since 1932, officially recognized population categories and estimates are non-existent. Be?

ing a minority is a contingent rather than a stable status, constituted by a setting apart and defining of self and

community vis-a-vis an other. Initially, Palestinian oth? erness in Lebanon was a national phenomenon related to

place of origin?and its destruction as "home." The refu?

gee experience did not include the usual minority attributes of difference in language, religion and culture. Palestinian marginality is contingent, to some extent, on the concept of a Lebanese nation and society, however

problematic, that excludes them. In the post-civil war period, a Palestinian presence has

lent Lebanese national identity some cohesion. With few

exceptions, there is a Lebanese political consensus on the need to monitor Palestinians in the short-term, and a re? fusal to grant them permanent right to settle in the

country. Religious, or sectarian, differences in Lebanon

complicate these assertions, which are premised on the notion of national difference. Palestinian otherness is jux? taposed not to a homogenous, singular category of

Lebanese, but to a shifting set of sectarian groups and

alliances, each with particular interests and fears. The Palestinian presence, perceived as a problem, can and does serve as a common denominator in unifying often dispar? ate elements of the Lebanese polity.

By seeking to define themselves as a minority, Palestin? ians are attempting both to accommodate their isolation from the larger Palestinian context and protest their pow? erlessness and restricted daily lives in the local Lebanese context. While they do have rights of residence as foreign refugees, they are seeking additional civil rights, a sort of well-defined minority position, that should be forthcoming according to international law, such as the right to employ? ment, social security, access to health services and education. Rather than a celebration of difference, this is a

strategy for survival in an otherwise desperate situation.

27

Refugees/Revolutionaries/Refugees

Since their arrival in Lebanon nearly 50 years ago, Pales? tinians have taken up a succession of publicly circulated collective identities. The transformation from refugees to revolutionaries and now to a minority illustrates their per? ceptions of self and community within a continually shifting spectrum of power in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region.

In the pre-1968 era, when Palestinians were politically unorganized and highly dependent on the United Nations

refugee apparatus, the term "refugee" often bore the weight of an insult and humiliation. One man I spoke with re? called with amusement his physical education classes at UNRWA schools in the 1950s and early 1960s. The chil? dren exercised to the chant of A-W-D-A (return) and camp residents often insisted on calling each other "returners" rather than refugees.

In 1969, an agreement between the Lebanese authori? ties and the PLO, known as the Cairo Accords, redefined the regulations governing refugees in Lebanon. The Cairo Accords gave Palestinians the right to employment, to form local committees in the camps and to engage in armed

struggle, among other things. Lebanon was transformed for them from a refuge into a site of revolt against displacement.

Times have changed. "Refugee" status has now become an asset in the battle to survive. Palestinians' status as

refugees is an international matter by definition and has clear legal implications. Being refugees assures them, at

minimum, to residency rights and to scarce UNRWA medi? cal and education resources, however paltry. The term

"refugee" doesn't arouse the negative reaction it once did, but even during the height of resistance Palestinians wouldn't give up the legal status of "refugee" because it

legitimized their right of return to Palestine. Discourses and categories of identity are not simply fluid; they can be

re-configured in new contexts for quite different purposes.

Marginalization

After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the PLO's evacu? ation from Beirut, and the PLO-Amal wars of the late 1980s, the political and practical geography of the camps changed dramatically. To the Lebanese, the camps have become

spaces to contain Palestinians until the peace talks produce some final resolution. Rumors abound that they are soon to be demolished and the refugees transferred to other Arab states (Iraq or Syria) or to more remote parts of Lebanon.

Palestinian refugees have been pathologized in a man? ner reminiscent of turn-of-the-century American hyperbole that immigrants carried tuberculosis, and more recent fears of immigrants as carriers of the AIDS virus. Pathology de? mands quarantine: segregating Palestinians would facilitate the "normalization" of Lebanon in the post-war era with national health restored through the isolation of an infec? tious presence.

28

There are several problems in distinguishing Palestin? ians from Lebanese and confining them to homogeneous enclaves. Palestinian refugees who came to Lebanon in 1948 share language and culture with their Lebanese hosts. The two communities have a long history of inter-marriage and economic trade. That most Palestinians are Sunni Muslims has been a thorny issue for Lebanon's Christians, who have

long feared a shift in sectarian demography. Spatial con? tainment was an attempt to produce and sharpen communal distinctions. However, urban camps, such as Shatila and

Bourj al-Barajneh in Beirut and Ain al-Hilwah in Saida, had merged with surrounding Lebanese areas. During the war and the current reconstruction process, once fairly in? distinct borders once again have become strikingly demarcated. In fixing a relationship between nationality and place, Lebanese authorities and militias have crafted and imposed boundaries where a fluidity of space and so? cial relations once prevailed.

Refugees describe their lives in terms of abnormality. Narratives of the homeland are less focused on nostalgia and more on an image of well-being and security. Aside from shortages of shelter, food, safety and access to medi? cal care and education, there are constant doubts about the security of residence. The nearly 50-year period of ex? ile has been marked by continual displacement. The sense of crisis is commonly expressed through the notion of era? sure. Not only were Palestinians landscaped out of

Palestine, but the erasure continues in exile. A Palestinian

lawyer, echoing popular sentiment, has written " that there are those who believe that the group known as Palestinian

refugees in Lebanon will stop existing within a few years."2

Recasting Palestinian Identity

How has Palestinian identity been legally recast over time and especially in the post-civil war era? Contrary to inter? national law governing the treatment of refugees, the state has implemented laws to restrict Palestinians in a variety of ways. Since 1962, legislation placed Palestinians on par with foreigners so that employment required a work per? mit. Palestinians circumvented this requirement for nearly two decades because demands for labor made enforcement

nearly non-existent, and later, there was little interest in

aggravating a now militant and empowered Palestinian

community. Since 1982, however, these laws have been enforced. The

Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs issued a decision on December 18,1982, setting out the areas of employment? ranging from banking to barbering?closed to foreigners. The Ministry also issued a circular detailing the areas of work open to foreigners with work permits. These include construction and its ancillary tasks (except on electrical installations) and sanitation, agriculture, tanning and leather works, excavation, textile and carpet works, smeltering, domestic labor, nursing, and automotive re?

pair and cleaning.3 This range of options available to Palestinians is limited to the most menial and low-paid

Middle East Report ? July-September 1996

sectors. Furthermore, Syrian or non-Ar ab labor, cheaper and more transient, is preferred, which has exacerbated

problems of unemployment and poverty. Economic hard?

ship has been further compounded by a decline in remittances after the Gulf War and the PLO's inability to

pay indemnities to families of martyrs. Rebuilding in the camps has been restricted and legally

regulated. Surveillance continues to intimidate Palestin?

ians, making them extremely cautious in their movements outside the camps' perimeters. Outside those boundaries, fear of harassment, insult and physical violence plague Pal? estinians. The right to organize politically and culturally has also been denied.

Travel restrictions further hinder Palestinian daily life and livelihood. Those traveling abroad on Palestinian travel documents have not always been guaranteed re-entry. In

1995, Libya expelled 30,000 Palestinian workers, 10-15,000 of whom were from Lebanon. On September 22,1995, the Lebanese Interior Ministry issued a decree requiring en?

try visas for those holding Palestinian laissez-passer documents.4 Palestinians holding Lebanese travel docu? ments were refused visas, forcing them into a nightmarish shuttle from place to unwelcoming place.

The new, post-civil war focus on obtaining civil rights as a minority is not a call for complete integration; rather, it seeks to mitigate the debilitating marginalization and destitution and to alleviate many daily problems. One former leader explained the desire for civil rights:

It touches directly on everyone's daily life. You cannot imagine what it is like. A Palestinian cannot work! For example, if he graduates from the American University of Beirut medical school, he is forbidden to work or open a clinic, while a Lebanese graduate can find a post in a hospital or open a clinic. If he is educated and wants to work, he will have to leave the country, which means that family relations are strained. This is a huge chal? lenge to the continuity of ordinary life.

With the reestablishment of government sovereignty in Lebanon (except for the Israeli-occupied south), the remain?

ing Palestinian leadership (encompassing 10 factions

opposed to Arafat and the peace plan) put forth a plan in 1992 calling for civil rights. A Palestinian involved in the

plan described the situation:

The Lebanese authorities agreed to form a ministerial delegation to talk with the Palestinians about civil rights and to conduct a study on their situation. It was a seri? ous move because the government assigned two ministers to the delegation, one Christian and one Mus? lim. They received a unified delegation?there was a representative from every Palestinian faction in Leba? non. It was a rare moment of Palestinian unity in Lebanon. They presented one unified memo explicitly calling for civil rights. The Lebanese took the memo and promised to answer in 15 days... days and now years have passed.

In April 1994, the Palestinian organizations in Leba? non presented another memorandum to Prime Minister

Middle East Report ? July-September 1996

Rafiq al-Hariri, asking for such civil rights as the right to

employment, to reconstruct the camps and to open Pales? tinian cultural and humanitarian organizations. Again, there has been no response.

The popular civil rights option is desirable since Pales? tinians are wary of diluting their national identity or

sacrificing the principle of the right of return. What they want is to live in security and pursue a livelihood. Civil rights and secure permanent residency would go a long way to? wards solving this problem.

Does this demand for civil rights without citizenship sig? nal a shift in Palestinian thinking toward the pragmatics of a

minority position? Palestinians cannot understand or accept that they are classified as 'Yoreigners" along with Sri Lankans, Thais, Filipinos, Kurds and Syrians, who together constitute Lebanon's imported working class. They may be re-thinking themselves and their community as a minority whose citi?

zenship and nationality will not coincide. The question of permanent Palestinian settlement in

Lebanon is the subject of contentious debate among Leba?

nese, ranging from statements calling for their wholesale removal to more measured and accommodating suggestions that they be granted civil rights and a more secure form of

residency. Although the Palestinian community is not ask?

ing for citizenship, those who can acquire it do so, which causes much resentment in the Palestinian community be? cause a legal fracture of the group can have negative consequences for the majority.

In the past several years, around 60,000 Palestinians have been naturalized in Lebanon. In the first round in 1994, most were Shi'a from border villages who had Palestinian

refugee status; the rest were Sunnis who, for reasons not made public, were naturalized in 1995, perhaps to balance out the Shi'a naturalization. Maronite protest ensured that the few remaining Palestinian Christians without Lebanese

citizenship were then naturalized.

Demographic and sectarian factors were at play here. The bulk of the refugees in the south are Sunni Muslims. Out? side of Saida, few Lebanese in the south are Sunnis. Rumor had it that the Lebanese Sunni leadership might have been

attempting to build a Sunni demographic and voting bloc in the south. The gradual and quiet way it is being done may be intended to prevent a noisy and potentially explosive Lebanese reaction to Palestinian naturalization, including its sectarian implications.

Palestinians who have acquired citizenship face resent? ment from those who have not. Naturalization is publicly cast as a betrayal of sorts. Yet, if offered the option, most Palestinians would not reject it for the simple reason that it would alleviate many of their problems. They would be em?

ployable and their children would have some security in the future. Palestinian leaders publicly oppose the idea of natu? ralization (although some have quietly accepted it), presenting it as a threat to Palestinian national identity and a negation of their right of return.5 The issue is dis? cussed in a thoughtful and provocative way by ordinary people. In the summer of 1994,1 asked Sarnia, a resident of

29

Shatila camp, if she would take Lebanese citizenship if it were offered. She paused for a few seconds to ponder and then said in a very precise way, her words carefully chosen: "If it were offered, I would take it, but only if I didn't have to

give up being a Palestinian and the future possibility of Pal? estinian citizenship." She was making a clear distinction between nationality and citizenship. Even if there was a Palestinian state, many Palestinians who are not from the West Bank or Gaza Strip would not go: "It's not our land. We want our land." These refugees still insist on a long-term as?

piration for convergence of place, nationality and citizenship. The citizenship issue resonates with the contradictions

of Lebanese policy and indicates the dilemmas they will face in the eventual peace negotiations. The US and Israel may force Lebanon to naturalize the refugees as part of a peace settlement that would then reward Lebanon with reconstruc? tion funds and a lifting of the US travel ban.

Palestinians desire a host country that is cosmopolitan and

open to foreigners?the idyllic reminiscence of pre-war Leba? non. They envision a radically different notion of spatiality where difference is related to place of origin rather than to forms of legality relegating them to the margins, literally and

figuratively. Their exacerbated marginalization stems from the re-emergent semblance of sovereign Lebanese state power. Areconstructive ethos promoting "Lebanon for the Lebanese" coexists with the continued entrenchment of sectarian poli? tics and identities. For now, aspirations for a legally constituted

minority status may be the only possible vision allowing for the retention of a Palestinian identity in Lebanon and a continued residency. ?

Endnotes 1 The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were expelled or left their homes in northern Palestine dialing the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war and have been denied the right to return. The number of Palestinians in Lebanon is subject to dispute. The current UNRWAfigure of 346,000 registered refugees is contested by figures such as 189,000 proposed by a leading Lebanese newspaper, Al-Safir. 2 Souheil Alnatour, "The Legal Status of the Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon," in Refugees in the Middle East, Nordic NGO Seminar, Oslo, March 26-27, 1993 (Oslo: Norwegian Refugee Council, 1993), p. 41. 3/6id.,p.44. 4 For the text of the decree see Journal of Palestine Studies 25/2 (1996), pp. 145-46. 5 See "The Palestinians in Lebanon: Interview with Salah Salah, August 29,1994," The Beirut Review 8 (Fall 1994), pp. 161-62.

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Continued from Makdisi, page 26. 12 Farid el-Khazen, The Communal Pact of National Identities: The Making and Politics of the 1943 National Pact, Papers on Lebanon No. 12 (Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1991), p. 5. Asignificant amount of work has been done on the persistence of "feudalism" in post-1943 Lebanon. Set forth in Michael Hudson, The Precarious Republic (NY: Random House, 1968), the topic has continued to generate interest by scholars such as Samir Khalaf, Lebanon's Predicament (NY: Columbia University Press, 1987) and Tabitha Petran, The Struggle Over Lebanon (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1987). The most recent contribution to this is Michael Gilsenan's study of power in twentieth-century northern Lebanon, Lords of the Lebanes Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996).

13 Ahmed Beydoun has written an excellent book on the subject of the creation and manipulation of historical narratives in modern Lebanon, Le Liban, une histoire disputee: identite et temps dans I'historographie libanese contemporaine (Beirut: Publications de lTJniversite Libanaise, 1984). 14 Gilsenen's Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society op. cit., vividly exhibits the contours of sectarianism and patronage politics by local landlords who subvert state institutions while at the same time run for office and are appointed ministers in the Lebanese government. See also Petran The Struggle over Lebanon, op. cit., pp. 35-37.

15 Hashim Sarkis has discussed the "territorialization" of identities during the war by pointing out that the violence provided new "spatial opportunities" to redefine identities that emerged after and because of the onset of physical destruction. See Hasim Sarkis, "Territorial Claims: Architecture and Post-War Attitudes Toward the Built Environment," in Samir Khalaf and Philip S. Khoury (eds.), Recovering Beirut: Urban Design and Post-War Reconstruction (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), pp.100-27.

16 "Lebanese National Report for the UN Summit on Social Development," Copenhagen, March 1995.

17 Quoted in Time International, January 15,1996.