Forgotten by the world, refugees in Lebanon still dream of better days ahead

Mennonite Central Committee
Saturday, 8 April 2000

SIDON, Lebanon--Hussein Saleh Miaari feels like a forgotten refugee in a land brimming with refugees forgotten by the world.

In 1948, in the midst of the conflict that produced the state of Israel, Saleh Miaari threw together a few belongings and left his village in northern Palestine. He expected to return a few weeks later when the fighting ended. Fifty-two years later he's still waiting.

He left as a young man, with a new wife and a young child. The child, their first, died on the journey into Lebanon. Now Saleh Miaari is a weathered old man, still grasping the keys to his former home. "I depend on God," says the 73-year-old through an interpreter. But he speaks with some resignation about his hope of returning home to Akbara--just 55 kilometers/33 miles away.

Saleh Miaari is far from alone in Lebanon. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Palestinians live here, adding significantly to the small country's population of 3 million.

The largest camp, Ain El-Helwe, within the city of Sidon, holds 75,000 people. It began as a temporary holding place, but has slowly become a concrete camp, teeming with people, surrounded by Lebanese guards.

A narrow, graffiti-covered alley leads to Saleh Miaari's rented home in Ain El-Helwe, which he shares with 20 family members. "I don't own anything here. This is what I own,'' Saleh Miaari says with passion, pointing to some limp, yellowing documents. These are the deeds to his land in what is now Israel-- about 175 acres in total. He farmed the land--raising sheep and goats, while maintaining an olive orchard.

In the early years, Saleh Miaari worked as a farm laborer and then in construction. For the last 18 years he hasn't worked at all. And he has always faced restrictions in Lebanon.

There are 72 kinds of jobs Palestinians can't hold here. What's left, typically, is low-paying manual labor jobs. Unemployment is endemic among Palestinian refugees. Health care and education is restricted to what the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, which runs the refugee camps, provides. Palestinian refugees can't become Lebanese citizens.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) works to provide some hope and opportunities for Palestinian refugees. MCC supports a Palestinian community health group based at a refugee camp in Beirut. It also provides financial and moral support to Salaam School where refugees are trained in vocational skills.

Khalid Miaari, director of the 110 student school, says with all the focus on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks regarding the West Bank and Gaza, little attention is given to Palestinians living outside those areas.

"Camping! Fifty-two years! Imagine," he says with frustration. He says many youth would like to leave Lebanon, although they don't all see a future for themselves in a Palestinian state where they've never lived.

"Palestinians have no place to go. And they are not wanted," insists Sylvia Haddad, who directs a Beirut school that integrates Palestinian and Lebanese children. "This is the crux of the whole problem.

"The children are being born with a grudge. There's a lot of despondency, hopelessness among the youth," she continues.

Miaari, who is related to the older Saleh Miaari, says he continues to hope. And he dreams of basic dignity. "What I look for is to live as a human being--to be respected, to have all the rights of a human being.

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org