Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled or were driven from their homes during the Israeli-Arab wars in 1948 and 1967. The fate of the estimated four million Palestinians living in refugee communities scattered around the Middle East remains at the heart of the conflict. This 1968 photograph taken in the West Bank by G. Nehmeh is from a UN exhibition on the lives of Palestinian refugee children which marked World Refugee Day on 20 June 2006. Burj el–Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camp in Beirut, Lebanon

By William R. Stanley, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Geography, USC STANLEYB@mailbox.sc.edu

Editors note: Dr. Stanley recently returned from his third visit to Lebanon. While waiting to join the relief shipments to the blockaded Palestinians in Gaza, he visited the Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and filed this report to the Star.

One suddenly is aware of a different communications environment in Lebanon. Behind are the congested streets of southern Beirut straddled by small shops selling every imaginable product to a moving sea of shoppers. Horns reverberate as drivers seek passage for vehicles moving bumper to bumper.

Suddenly, streets are reduced to narrow foot passageways weaving through a labyrinth of two and three story concrete structures having no apparent symmetry other than fronting on these meandering trails. Mostly hardened dirt with occasional stretches of crumbling concrete directly under which flows the camp’s antiquated and, judging by the stench and slimy surface, frequently overflowing sewage system.

Welcome to Burj el–Barajneh nestled into the expanding urbanized sou-thern portion of Lebanon’s Capital and largest city. This refugee camp is a lingering residual of the turmoil and human cost associated with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Burj el–Barajneh is not the largest camp for Palestinians who once lived in what is now Israel nor did it suffer the level of terror inflicted on the nearby Sabra and Shatila Refugee Camps in September, 1982, when the Israeli military flew Christian Phalangist thugs into Beirut from occupied southern Lebanon to murder upwards of 2,000 Palestinian old men, women, and children.

Young men from the camps with military experience had been obliged to leave Lebanon with their Palestinian leadership under a deal brokered by the United States. It was after this maritime evacuation that Israeli troops sealed off the camps and allowed the murderers to have a free hand. Burg el- Barajneh might well have suffered a similar fate had it not been for the presence of Italian troops and their steadfastness in preventing the Christian militia to enter the camp.

This and scores of other camps in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Gaza accommodated the 914,000 Palestinian refugees from 1948 who registered with The United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Established at the outset as temporary tent camps, these sites morphed into permanent enclaves that in 2005 housed 4.3 million people.

Only the camps in Lebanon persist almost totally isolated from the cultural and economic life of host country populations. Political integration in host countries is sporadic with the notable exception of Jordan.

Who are these camp residents? The war that led to the creation of Israel saw entire regions emptied of their Palestinian inhabitants. Some, probably the majority, fled because of Jewish terror, others to await the never–to–materialize successful entry of sympathetic Arab armies from neighboring Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. Only the latter’s Jordan Legion achieved any success, to be lost in the 1967 war.

This is The West Bank… better yet what is left of it to Palestinian habitation given the inexorable encroachment of Jewish settlements. Palestinians who lived in villages and farmed for their livelihoods likely constituted the majority of refugees. Professional people had a brighter future since they could offer their technical expertise to the Arab– speaking emerging economic powerhouses sitting astride the vast oil deposits of the Persian Gulf. Teachers, physicians, engineers, and educated people in general were in demand in these new economies. Dirt farmers had no market for their skills and thus languished in their temporary camps.

Next week: Who are the Palestinians