The Lebanese television station LBC reports that Syrian refugees in Lebanon are facing a hard living in the Chouf district.
Yesterday, former residents of the embattled Damascus “Yarmouk” Palestinian refugee camp staged a protest in Taalabaya, Lebanon, outside the Palestinian cultural center to bring attention to their cause.
They called upon the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Higher Relief Commission, asking for food and shelter.
A representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said Syrian refugees in Lebanon, especially in the Bekaa region bordering Syria, were in need of shelters and fuel. (LBC)
Background: In particular for a big part of the Lebanese Christians, the Palestinian case is still a red rag due to experience from the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990).
After being forcedly and with military might expelled from Jordan by King Hussein (“Black September”, 1970/71) for trying to take over the Hashemite kingdom, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) fled to Lebanon.
As then Christian politician and head of the Kataeb party Pierre Gemayel said, the Palestinians were received as brotherly guests in Lebanon. Though, militant Palestinian fractions – war hardened and much better equipped than the Lebanese – became overconfident and demanding.
Those were the times of Pan-Arabism, from which a huge portion of Lebanon’s Christians did always distance itself, and which holds true to this day. Many even do not even consider themselves real Arabs but descendants of the ancient culture of Phoenicia.
Studies in recent years have found that around one third of the Lebanese population carries traces of Phoenician genetics, equally divided between all regions and sects.
Skirmishes between Christian fractions and Palestinian militants, which were supported by several Lebanese mainly Muslims parties, in 1975 culminated in the April 13 Ain El Remmaneh bus and church incident that is widely considered as the beginning of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990).
Two Lebanese Christian politicians last week put their fingers in that still open wound of Lebanese history and the country’s strained relations with Palestinians.
Minister of Energy and Water Gebran Bassil of the March 8 government bloc and opposition March 14 deputy Nayla Tueni, daughter of assassinated Lebanese newspaper heir Gebran Tueni, wrote about a new “Palestinian problem”, which gained them mixed reactions.
We at Beirut-Reporter can confirm that those recent reactions of Lebanese Christian politicians did not come out of nowhere, although they were in part heavily criticised, and Minister Bassil did back-pedal from his former statements. Parliamentary elections are set for summer 2013.
Lebanon, indeed, is facing growing problems to cope with a swelling number of Syrian refugees.
At least in Christian dominated regions the feeling is real that the refugee issue – both Syrians as a whole and Palestinians in particular – could once again trigger negative effects clamping down on a country, which is already suffering from a severe economical crisis.
A balanced proportion of all major religious sects is worrying the country’s people since the declaration of independence of the Lebanese Republic in 1943.
