Abstract
This chapter investigates three questions related to Palestine refugees in Lebanon: (1) What is their current situation, (2) how are they affected by the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon, and (3) what is their perspectives for the future? After a brief sketch of the history of Lebanon, the political situation is analysed, where it is concluded that the political elite primarily is occupied by power politics among themselves. This has a consequence that the governance system is almost politically paralysed when it comes to developing necessary social and economic reforms, leaving it to Lebanese society and the international donor community to handle the refugee crisis. Based on field studies in Lebanon, including in Palestine refugee camps, the situation for Palestinians is described and the ‘Palestinian protection gap’ in terms of human rights is discussed. The chapter concludes that the Syrian crisis has resulted in significant social, economic and political pressure on Palestinians, making their situation concerning protection critical. It further concludes that even if Lebanon on the surface appears to be a cosmopolitan and liberal society, there exists a grim human rights situation concerning migrants in general and Palestinian refugees in particular. As the perspectives for a two-state solution in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict seems further away than ever, the chapter end with a question: What are the prospects for Palestine refugees?
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Notes
- 1.
I want to thank the Danish Institute in Damascus for substantial funding of my fieldwork and study trips.
- 2.
As a city, Beirut was built and developed mostly by migrants: by Armenians arriving after the massacres in Turkey at the ending of the First World War, by the French who mandated Lebanon until its independence in 1946, and by the Palestinians who arrived in 1948 and the Shia Muslims from the South who escaped Israeli occupation of South Lebanon until 2000 (The Guardian 2016). Today an unknown number of migrants from Asia and Africa live in Beirut, and Syrians have been migrating to and from Lebanon since the end of the civil war in 1990. Finally, Syrians have arrived, escaping the civil war in Syria, which broke out in 2011.
- 3.
The UNCCP still exists as the only UN agency with the task of solving the Palestinian refugee problem by finding a sustainable solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict even though it has not produced anything for decades. As Michael Kagan notes in his article on the so called ‘protection gap’ debate: ‘Every year, the General Assembly goes through the ritual of noting “with regret that the UNCCP has been unable to find means of achieving progress” in implementing Resolution 194′s provisions for refugee return and compensation, and then asks the UNCCP “to continue exerting efforts” and “to report” the following year’ (Kagan, 2009, 517; cf. Goddard, 2009).
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Erslev Andersen, L. (2020). No Future for the Palestinians in Lebanon: Power Sharing, Political Stagnancy and Securitisation of (Palestinian) Migration. In: Jacobsen, M., Berhanu Gebre, E., Župarić-Iljić, D. (eds) Cosmopolitanism, Migration and Universal Human Rights. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50645-2_5
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