.Palestinians Long to Get Back Into Camp
MOHAMMARA, Lebanon (AP) - A Lebanese flag waves victoriously over a caved-in roof at Nahr el-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp that is now a maze of crumpled buildings and mangled concrete. Explosions echo as soldiers set off unexploded ordnance in the rubble.
The government's three-month battle to drive the militant Fatah Islam group out of the camp is over, but thousands of Palestinians who fled the fighting worry they will never be allowed back to their homes.
All they can do is gaze longingly from a distance. The ruins of closely packed buildings are spookily visible from a highway, but barbed wire and barricades block entry. Soldiers stand along its perimeter all the way to the pale green Mediterranean Sea, making sure no one gets in.
"I wanted to see with my own eyes the extent of the destruction," said Mohammed Abu Hussein, standing at the northern entrance a few days ago after being barred from entering to check on his house.
A big blast from a controlled detonation inside the camp shook the area, sending up huge sprays of sand as a building crashed to the ground.
"It was my camp. I love it despite the narrow alleys and the dark houses," said the downcast 26-year-old computer engineer. "Look at it, everything's gone. When your house is destroyed, you have nothing."
"It's where I was born, where I grew up, where my memories are buried now. Nothing is left of those memories. Even if we go back, there will be nothing left of our past, not even photos. I'm sure of that," Abu Hussein added.
Memories. It's the word repeated over and over again by Nahr el-Bared residents, their reason for wanting to go back.
On a practical level, they want to find out if their homes have been damaged, or destroyed, and to retrieve whatever possessions they can.
But on a deeper level, they say, the camp holds the memories of their hometowns in what is now Israel, the link feeding their hope of being allowed to go back one day. That "right of return" is a promise made to them by Palestinian leaders for five decades and they continue to live in that hope - even though chances of doing so seem more remote than ever before.
Ibrahim Dawoud left everything behind in Nahr el-Bared, including his most valuable possessions: the deed to his family's ancestral land in Saasaa, a village in northern Israel, and the key to that house, which Dawoud's grandparents brought along when then they fled to Lebanon after the state of Israel was created in 1948.
"We might at least salvage those memories by going back to the camp. Those memories that we left behind in Nahr el-Bared are the memories our parents brought with them from Palestine. They're all linked," said Dawoud, 42.
Most of the more than 30,000 people who fled the camp in the first week after fighting broke out May 20 took refuge in the nearby Beddawi camp - cramming inside U.N.-run schools, mosques, homes of relatives and friends. The better off families rented apartments.
Government promises that residents can go back as soon as Nahr el-Bared is rebuilt have done little to reassure the Palestinians. It will take at least a month to clear the rubble as well as unexploded land mines, artillery shells and bombs, the army says. No one has said how long it will then take to rebuild.
At a donor's conference in Beirut this week, the Lebanese government put reconstruction costs at $382.5 million. The U.N. appealed for $55 million in emergency funding. The United States promised $10 million, in addition to $3.5 million pledged in June, while Germany, Italy and Norway pledged or gave around $10 million more.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora warned that if the camp is not rebuilt, "the dangers will be limitless ... the potential threat from violent extremism is against us all."
Authorities initially believed that Fatah Islam's leader, Shaker al-Abbsi, died in the months of fighting, which killed 164 Lebanese soldiers and 222 militants. But DNA tests on the body thought to be his proved negative, raising fears that the Jordanian could still pose a threat.
Moreover, a number of radical Islamic groups - many with links to Fatah Islam and sympathetic to al-Qaida - continue to operate in Lebanon, notably in the southern Palestinian camp of Ein el-Hilweh.
In the Beddawi camp, Dawoud, his wife and six children live in half a school classroom, a blue plastic sheet separating them from the family using the other side. Their meager belongings consist of a tiny TV set, a small electric burner for cooking, a rug, a mattress and fake flowers stuck on the wall.
His 13-year-old son, Adham, has made a large drawing of his memories of shattered Nahr el-Bared. In the drawing, the sun is black, a missile falls from a helicopter as people leave a mosque, a Katyusha rocket targets a kindergarten, a tank turret points toward the camp.
Adham said he did the drawing "so I can remember the camp and what happened to us." His mother, Najah, said Adham has shown a lot of aggression since the battle began. He frequently punches his father and talks in his sleep, saying things like: "They're attacking ... Get out."
Nahr el-Bared, in northern Lebanon, was one of the country's few camps that was relatively prosperous and peaceful. Its residents were known for business, and Lebanese visited to shop.
Many of its wealthier residents had built six- or seven-story buildings in the northern part of the camp - a contrast to the southern end's collection of low, shabby buildings with few amenities.
"Despite all the restrictions we face in Lebanon and the denial of our rights as human beings, we've made something out of nothing in Nahr el-Bared. Against all odds, we built the most beautiful buildings there," said Ihab Abu Hussein, 18, brother of Mohammed, the computer engineer.
Hisseen Lubani, a 74-year-old who was 15 when she fled her Palestinian village for Lebanon, described her people's yearning for their camp.
"We have a saying," she said smiling softly, "a tent that belongs to you is your castle."
MyWay
The place should be razed to the ground and rebuilt as a community, not a camp.
The government's three-month battle to drive the militant Fatah Islam group out of the camp is over, but thousands of Palestinians who fled the fighting worry they will never be allowed back to their homes.
All they can do is gaze longingly from a distance. The ruins of closely packed buildings are spookily visible from a highway, but barbed wire and barricades block entry. Soldiers stand along its perimeter all the way to the pale green Mediterranean Sea, making sure no one gets in.
"I wanted to see with my own eyes the extent of the destruction," said Mohammed Abu Hussein, standing at the northern entrance a few days ago after being barred from entering to check on his house.
A big blast from a controlled detonation inside the camp shook the area, sending up huge sprays of sand as a building crashed to the ground.
"It was my camp. I love it despite the narrow alleys and the dark houses," said the downcast 26-year-old computer engineer. "Look at it, everything's gone. When your house is destroyed, you have nothing."
"It's where I was born, where I grew up, where my memories are buried now. Nothing is left of those memories. Even if we go back, there will be nothing left of our past, not even photos. I'm sure of that," Abu Hussein added.
Memories. It's the word repeated over and over again by Nahr el-Bared residents, their reason for wanting to go back.
On a practical level, they want to find out if their homes have been damaged, or destroyed, and to retrieve whatever possessions they can.
But on a deeper level, they say, the camp holds the memories of their hometowns in what is now Israel, the link feeding their hope of being allowed to go back one day. That "right of return" is a promise made to them by Palestinian leaders for five decades and they continue to live in that hope - even though chances of doing so seem more remote than ever before.
Ibrahim Dawoud left everything behind in Nahr el-Bared, including his most valuable possessions: the deed to his family's ancestral land in Saasaa, a village in northern Israel, and the key to that house, which Dawoud's grandparents brought along when then they fled to Lebanon after the state of Israel was created in 1948.
"We might at least salvage those memories by going back to the camp. Those memories that we left behind in Nahr el-Bared are the memories our parents brought with them from Palestine. They're all linked," said Dawoud, 42.
Most of the more than 30,000 people who fled the camp in the first week after fighting broke out May 20 took refuge in the nearby Beddawi camp - cramming inside U.N.-run schools, mosques, homes of relatives and friends. The better off families rented apartments.
Government promises that residents can go back as soon as Nahr el-Bared is rebuilt have done little to reassure the Palestinians. It will take at least a month to clear the rubble as well as unexploded land mines, artillery shells and bombs, the army says. No one has said how long it will then take to rebuild.
At a donor's conference in Beirut this week, the Lebanese government put reconstruction costs at $382.5 million. The U.N. appealed for $55 million in emergency funding. The United States promised $10 million, in addition to $3.5 million pledged in June, while Germany, Italy and Norway pledged or gave around $10 million more.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora warned that if the camp is not rebuilt, "the dangers will be limitless ... the potential threat from violent extremism is against us all."
Authorities initially believed that Fatah Islam's leader, Shaker al-Abbsi, died in the months of fighting, which killed 164 Lebanese soldiers and 222 militants. But DNA tests on the body thought to be his proved negative, raising fears that the Jordanian could still pose a threat.
Moreover, a number of radical Islamic groups - many with links to Fatah Islam and sympathetic to al-Qaida - continue to operate in Lebanon, notably in the southern Palestinian camp of Ein el-Hilweh.
In the Beddawi camp, Dawoud, his wife and six children live in half a school classroom, a blue plastic sheet separating them from the family using the other side. Their meager belongings consist of a tiny TV set, a small electric burner for cooking, a rug, a mattress and fake flowers stuck on the wall.
His 13-year-old son, Adham, has made a large drawing of his memories of shattered Nahr el-Bared. In the drawing, the sun is black, a missile falls from a helicopter as people leave a mosque, a Katyusha rocket targets a kindergarten, a tank turret points toward the camp.
Adham said he did the drawing "so I can remember the camp and what happened to us." His mother, Najah, said Adham has shown a lot of aggression since the battle began. He frequently punches his father and talks in his sleep, saying things like: "They're attacking ... Get out."
Nahr el-Bared, in northern Lebanon, was one of the country's few camps that was relatively prosperous and peaceful. Its residents were known for business, and Lebanese visited to shop.
Many of its wealthier residents had built six- or seven-story buildings in the northern part of the camp - a contrast to the southern end's collection of low, shabby buildings with few amenities.
"Despite all the restrictions we face in Lebanon and the denial of our rights as human beings, we've made something out of nothing in Nahr el-Bared. Against all odds, we built the most beautiful buildings there," said Ihab Abu Hussein, 18, brother of Mohammed, the computer engineer.
Hisseen Lubani, a 74-year-old who was 15 when she fled her Palestinian village for Lebanon, described her people's yearning for their camp.
"We have a saying," she said smiling softly, "a tent that belongs to you is your castle."
MyWay
The place should be razed to the ground and rebuilt as a community, not a camp.
posted by madtom at 12:46 AM
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