Syrians join Palestinians in overcrowded camp

The main market in the Shatila refugee camp, one of two such rapidly growing settlements on the edge of Beirut, Lebanon. Photo by Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Palestinian Refuge for 6 Decades, Now Flooded From Syria

By Anne Barnard, NY Times
November 28, 2014

SHATILA CAMP, Lebanon — An enormous iron key hangs on a water tower above a crossroads in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila, just south of downtown Beirut. The sculpture alludes to the rusting keys that many families here treasure, from houses lost when they fled what became Israel in 1948.

Now, a new wave of refugees, this time from Syria, has roughly doubled the population of Shatila and the neighboring camp, Sabra, to 40,000, aid workers say. The newcomers, pouring into narrow streets and cramped concrete-block apartments, are among more than a million people who have streamed from Syria into Lebanon — a country of four million when the war started — and are radically reshaping neighborhoods like these.

In Shatila, people are adding new floors to their houses, hoping to rent them at soaring rates. New businesses are opening, run by Syrians or catering to them. Strained water and sewage systems are buckling. And as the Syrian civil war rages on, and the newcomers begin to doubt that they will ever return home, the changes are taking on the feel of permanence.

That process is unfolding across Lebanon and other countries bordering Syria, in yet another way the Middle East is being reordered. But in Sabra and Shatila, change is freighted with extra layers of historical memory and hardship.

Sabra and Shatila camp after the massacre, January 1982. Photo from Ahram Archive.

The words Sabra and Shatila resonate as a symbol of the vulnerability of refugees. They are not just the names of the camps, but shorthand for the notorious massacre there in 1982, when Lebanese Christian militants killed Palestinian civilians as Israeli troops encircling the area stood by.

They also stand for grinding poverty. “Camps” is a misnomer for settlements that decades ago grew into unplanned but densely built urban slums.

Yusef al-Masri, 46, a Palestinian born and raised in Shatila, said his grandmother had often recounted what her family planned 66 years ago when they left their town in the Galilee — Safad, now called Tzfat or Safed in Israel — during the war over Israel’s founding.

“They said, ‘We will leave everything and come back in three days,’ ” he recalled. “We didn’t.”

He predicted a similar fate for the Syrians, blaming global and Arab leaders, who, he declared, would “sell Syria as they sold Palestine.”

The streets of the camp, mostly too narrow for cars, bustle with delivery carts and darting children. Makeshift electric wires form a canopy, and sewage scents the air. Poor Lebanese and migrant workers live here among Palestinians, who are kept in poverty by restrictive Lebanese laws that exclude them from many professions.

Syrian children attend a school programme run by Najda Now International, in the Shatila Refugee Camp in Lebanon, Oct. 22, 2014. A new wave of refugees from Syria and its civil war has once again swollen the population of Shatila, which was first established after the war over the creation of Israel 66 years ago. Photo by Bryan Denton/NY Times

Even so, Sabra and Shatila have given the new refugees a warmer welcome than many wealthier districts. Syrians move freely, even at night, when many Lebanese towns impose curfews. Those who fear the Lebanese authorities, because they lack legal residency or are wanted in Syria for opposing the government, say they feel safer here, where Palestinian militias hold sway and security forces rarely come.

Palestinians who have worked to aid their own community here for years founded an organization, Basma wa Zaytouna, to aid refugees from Syria as well as residents. It has grown quickly, building several floors to house new programs like an informal school and a needlepoint workshop.

The arrivals include about 5,000 Palestinians who lived as refugees in Syria, and now are living through what some call a second Nakba, or catastrophe, Palestinians’ term for the 1948 displacement.

Lebanon has not set up any formal camps for refugees from Syria. Instead, refugees find their own haphazard housing.

Adding another floor to a crowded house. Photo by Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Syrians and Palestinians alike pile new tales of trauma onto the camps’ painful history. One young Palestinian, Ayman Saed, fled Syria after being detained for eight months. His crime: trying to escape the government cordon around Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, ruled and fought over by insurgents, starved and bombarded by the security forces.

Amjad Hariri, 31, a Syrian from the southern city of Dara’a, said he lost two brothers, shot as they tried to flee security forces early in the uprising that began with protests in 2011. Soon after, his sister Majdaleen, 14, was shot in the face by a sniper as she walked to a government office; she died three weeks later.

Asked if he would ever return to Syria, his answer was an unabashed no.

“What’s done is done,” he said. “The damage is done. I can’t believe they killed this many people. There is no future. There will be no buildings from the north to the south — no Syria.”

Yet, he considers himself one of the lucky ones. With savings earned before the war as a visiting laborer in a Beirut sandwich shop, he was able to open a place of his own, offering traditional chicken liver and innovative fajitas. Behind the counter, fellow refugees roll sandwiches, adding Syrian-style fixings like pickles and herbs.

His neighbors are kind, Mr. Hariri said, helping him fend off interference from militias. But he does not feel secure. When Syrian insurgents periodically claim responsibility for attacks on Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia allied with the Syrian government, angry men come to “take revenge” on Syrians, he said.

To be safe, he has a rule: “No one is allowed to talk politics in the shop.”

Some Palestinians identify with the displaced Syrians, who, like the Palestinians before them, face growing hostility as they are increasingly perceived as a threat to Lebanon.

“Palestinian refugees have more experience than the Syrians,” Georges Talamas, an organizer with Basma wa Zaytouna, said wryly.

Others see the Syrians as an economic threat.

“They took all the jobs,” said Mr. Masri, the longtime resident. He also complained that the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees favors Palestinians arriving from Syria. They cause envy because, in contrast to their counterparts in Lebanon, they had close to full rights in Syria to own property, pursue an education and hold jobs.

Yet, new refugees also bring benefits, Mr. Talamas said, spending their modest cash in the camp. Aid projects hire residents and buy supplies locally, and a new small business microcredit program for women must make 40 percent of its loans to local residents.

Traditional Palestinian wedding in Shatila Refugee Camp, Beirut, Lebanon, June 2006, Photo by Golbarg Bashi

Syrians here tend to hold small, family weddings at home to save money, but they do not skimp on dresses. At a wedding shop stocked with poufy satin gowns, refugees pay $200, usually in installments, to rent one for the night. Next door, a shop advertises landline calls to Syria at a steep markup.

On Sabra’s market street, lined with sellers of beans, parsley, eggplant and tomatoes, many vendors have hired Syrians to work at their stands. Marwan Tuaysan, 15, said he sold housewares for less than $7 a day to support eight sisters, and had not been to school in several years.

Nearby, trays of baklava filled Huzaifa Deek’s sweet shop with the smell of pistachios and sweet syrup. Mr. Deek, 36, a Syrian, once had half a dozen shops around Damascus, in places that now read like a list of battlefields: Douma, Daraya, Jobar.

“They are all safe with Bashar,” he said, in a sarcastic reference to President Bashar al-Assad. He followed his customers to Sabra and opened a shop there. But he encountered resistance.

“They accuse us of stealing their customers because we are cheaper and tastier,” he said. “But it is God who gives us this grace.”