Still no justice for Palestinians

It has been 27 years since the massacre of at least 2,000 unarmed Palestinians and poor Lebanese in the Sabra and Shatila refugees camps here in Beirut.

U.S. imperialism, Israeli Zionism and Arab reaction were all in on the mass murders. The U.S. government left the camps disarmed and vulnerable when it ordered the removal of Palestine Liberation Organization fighters from Lebanon.

Conditions for refugees are wretched, as this alley in Shatila camp shows. WW photo: Joyce Chediac

The slaughter was ordered by Ariel Sharon. The massacres were committed by the neo-Nazi Lebanese Phalange.

What is life like today in these camps?

Lebanon’s Palestinian camps are easy to spot. It’s not just the Palestinian flags and pictures of Palestinian heroes. It’s the overcrowding, the sewage seeping into the streets. It is the maze of jerry-rigged electric wires that run from building to building and snake through the cramped alleys. It is the bullet-pocked walls and collapsed buildings, testimony to decades of attacks by Israel and right-wing Lebanese militias.

On entering Shatila, this writer could see that while the civil war in Lebanon ended in 1990, the war against the Palestinian camps goes on.

Shatila is smaller than three football fields. My guide, Tayes Nasser from the Palestinian Youth Center, said 17,500 Palestinians live here. At least 8,000 more live in the adjacent Sabra camp, along with poor Lebanese and some Syrian workers.

Palestinians are not allowed to live outside the camps. New floors are added to old buildings to accommodate the growing population: “We have nowhere to build but up,” Nasser said. Today, there are many seven-story buildings with no elevators. This reporter climbed the stairs and was shown tiny, impoverished apartments in which six or seven people live.

Electricity for these apartments averages $50 a month, a huge sum, so people jerry-rig the power to keep the cost down. Wires are everywhere. A young man was killed in early September in Shatila after accidentally leaning on a live wire. One or two people are electrocuted in this way each year.

“The living conditions here are not sanitary,” Nasser said. “The sewage system is inadequate and one always smells sewage. This is stressful.” In the winter, when it rains a lot, water comes through the cinderblock walls, bringing mold that causes allergic reactions.

We walked through a street market that sells goods of all kinds. Nasser explained that the camp is so overcrowded that merchants have no place to store their goods at night, so they rent rooms in people’s houses. Nasser himself rents out one room of his three-room flat to a merchant. The seven people in his family sleep in the remaining two rooms.

We entered Shatila’s only school. It has three floors. Forty students study in each cramped classroom. Scores of women stood waiting in the school’s common room. The atmosphere was charged. A wealthy Palestinian had donated 80 boxes of food, containing pasta, rice, sugar and other items. Already more than 80 women were assembled. Some would go home empty-handed.

We did not see many young adult men in the camp. Palestinians are not allowed to work at most jobs in Lebanon so the majority of young adults work abroad, sending money home to support their families. Many people think about emigrating to protect their families, Nasser says.

Palestinians have always valued education. However, after years of war the educational level of Palestinians living in Lebanon has dropped. Because they are not citizens, Palestinians must pay more to study at Lebanese universities. Stress, war and an uncertain political situation for Palestinians here have led to a high dropout rate.

Nasser took me to a mosque in the camp’s center called the Martyrs’ Cemetery. Now the most important building in the camp, it was used as a mass grave for those killed by shells, snipers and disease when the camp was encircled, besieged, bombed and starved by Amal militias and Syrian forces from 1986 to 1987 during the War of the Camps. The mosque now bears the names and pictures of those interred here. It is used for Al Nakba and other commemorations.

“We lost 800 in the War of the Camps,” Nasser said. “In the 1982 massacre we lost more. Families here still live with the 1982 massacre.” To this day, these Palestinian losses have not been addressed. The victims of these massacres have never been considered entitled to a formal investigation.

Despite the hardships, the Palestinian people in Sabra and Shatila hold fast to their dignity and their determination to return to their original towns and villages in Palestine.

“With all these problems, we don’t want money,” Nasser said. “We want our land. We are the people who have the right to Palestine. Israel and the Zionist movement can do what they want. They can kill us more and destroy our houses and our land, but we won’t give up our right to return.

“I know where my village is in Palestine. I can walk from Lebanon to my village in Palestine. It’s that close.” Referring to the current as well as former prime ministers of Israel, whose families emigrated from Europe, Nasser asked, “But does Netanyahu know where his village is? Does Sharon know where his village is in Palestine? Does Rabin?

“We want America and other countries that send military aid to Israel to stop, and to stop funding Israeli settlements. America always speaks about democracy. Where is the democracy in the situation of the Palestinians? From America we get nothing—always empty promises. And now, because of current U.S policies, we are paying a higher price during the peace talks than we paid during war. Israel doesn’t give us anything for peace—just blood and more blood.

“We want the next generation to know the roots of the Palestine problem. We believe in a democratic life for all people, Jewish or Palestinian, and for all religions. For many centuries Jews and Palestinians lived together, so we have confidence they can work together and live together again. We are not against two states, but one country is better.

“We are patient. We will wait for the time when we have our rights.”

This is the first article in a series that will explore Palestinian conditions in Lebanon, interview Palestinian leaders, and explain how progressive people can support Palestinians waiting to return.