Commentary by STEFAN CHRISTOFF

The youth who play football on the small streets and narrow alleys of Bourj El Barajneh refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut represent an entire generation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who live in a day-to-day low-intensity war. This is a war waged against Palestinian refugees by the government of Lebanon. It is not waged through military campaigns and guerrilla battles as in the Lebanese civil war, but through policies and laws which are slowly choking the life from Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps.

This economic warfare is carried out through specific laws and regulations that attack Palestinian refugees' ability to survive. They are forbidden from owning property, working in over 70 professions, receiving proper health care and travelling freely. They do not hold Lebanese citizenship, which gives them little influence over the political decisions of the country in which the majority of them have lived for over 50 years. Most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live in poverty-stricken, war-destroyed camps as non-citizens with the struggle for the right of return to Palestine the only light shining in an otherwise dark future.

Politicized poverty

In 2002, the Lebanese parliament passed an amendment to the national property law that forbids "non-Lebanese persons, who do not possess citizenship issued by a state recognized by Lebanon, to inherit or buy property." So a family of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon cannot pass down ownership of their rudimentary housing within the refugee camps to their children. Property is automatically handed over to the Lebanese authorities.

The national property law symbolizes the larger economic war being waged against Palestinian communities aimed at erasing their presence from Lebanon. Essentially, the regularization of the refugees in Lebanon would erase an easy political scapegoat for the Lebanese establishment, as many of today's social and economic problems there are unjustly blamed on the Palestinian presence.

This economic warfare against the Palestinians is furthered by two governmental decrees, passed in 1964 and 1995, which limit the work available to foreigners living in Lebanon. This lack of employment opportunity has created a devastating economic condition throughout the refugee camps. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, more than 60 per cent of Palestinian refugees live below the poverty line.

"Can you imagine a Palestinian refugee family who has lived in Lebanon for over 50 years living without the right to work?" says Souheil Natour, a Lebanese-based Palestinian organizer with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. "Palestinians often do not have any means to support themselves or their families. This is why you find so many Palestinian youth fleeing Lebanon, travelling to various countries in the hope that they will have the ability to work so that they can send money back to their families to sustain them."

Bombed-out prisons

It is not only economic tactics that are used in today's war against the Palestinians. The Lebanese army maintains a constant presence on the outskirts of the majority of the refugee camps. When attempting to enter southern Lebanese refugee camps like Ein El-Helweh, you encounter a series of Lebanese military checkpoints that control each entry and exit point.

"Palestinians are treated as a threat to Lebanon, so therefore the Lebanese army attempts to contain the refugees in the camps," says Jaber Suleiman, a Palestinian living in Lebanon who was displaced in 1948 and now works as an activist with the international Al-Awda (Right of Return) Movement. "There is a process of ghettoization. The movement of Palestinians is controlled by the Lebanese army. Each entrance and exit to the camps is controlled by the army. To enter or exit the camp, your car is checked, your documents are examined."

Today's war treats the Palestinians like criminals. The crime they are guilty of is being refugees, forced from their homes in Palestine by the Israeli state. This criminalization continues today. Each Palestinian born into a camp arrives into this world as a refugee, stateless and without any basic rights.

The refugee camps of southern Lebanon are in reality large, decaying prisons, which remain in terrible disrepair due to countless attacks during the Lebanese civil war. Buildings in every camp are lined with bullet-holes or are bombed-out. The camps remain in this state due to Lebanese legislation passed shortly after the end of the civil war that prohibits refugees from entering the camps with building materials.

The Lebanese army checkpoints at the entrances of the camps enforce this regulation. In concrete terms, Palestinians living there have no ability to improve living conditions, and live with constant reminders of the tragedies borne by their communities during the civil war.

Realities ignored

This current economic and political war manifests itself not only in the camps but here on the streets of Montreal. Due to the terrible conditions within the Lebanese camps, many have fled to Canada to claim asylum. These Palestinians, who number over 100 in Montreal, are refugees a second time and are currently facing deportation at the hands of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). Since Sept. 11, 2001, CIC has systematically been denying Palestinian refugee claims.

Canada, like the United States and many other nations, altered its immigration laws post-Sept. 11. In June 2002, CIC changed the decision-making structure for refugee claimants. Now, only one Immigration and Refugee Board judge takes a decision on the refugee claims. Previously, each case was viewed separately by two.

The immigration judges who make the decisions on refugee claims often know very little about the situation in the country the refugee comes from. In the case of two brothers who fled the Ein El-Hilweh camp, two different judges delivered opposite decisions. One brother's refugee claim was accepted and one rejected.

In reality, Montreal has become another front in the Palestinian refugees' struggle for their basic dignity—a struggle against the Canadian government's inhumane efforts to deport them to the life of political and economic persecution in Lebanon.

Today, the governments of Lebanon and Canada stand together in their persecution of Palestinian refugees. In Lebanon, hundreds of thousands of refugees are struggling on a daily basis to survive in a country where the government continues, through laws and legislation, to attack them. In Montreal, the 100-plus refugees are struggling as a community to fight their deportation orders from Immigration Canada. Today the struggle of Palestinian refugees has truly become a globalized reality.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based member of the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led movement of activists working to raise awareness of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and end the Israeli occupation. He also works with the No One is Illegal Campaign and is an independent journalist working with CKUT Radio Montreal and Free Speech Radio News. Stefan can be reached at christoff@tao.ca