Palestinians in Lebanon to commemorate Nakba

Fears of coronavirus will not prevent Palestinian refugees from marking Friday the 72nd anniversary of the Palestinian “Nakba,” which displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land and forced them into asylum.

Activities held online are set to replace the usual sit-ins and marches that Palestinians are known to organize to commemorate their dispossession and demand their right to return to their homeland.

While the “Nakba” commemorations refer back to the expulsion of Palestinians from their villages and towns in May 1948, the catastrophe is one that is ongoing. Millions of Palestinian refugees now live in extreme poverty in squalid refugee camps around the world. Israel’s continued occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza also forces thousands of Palestinians from their land each year, whether through home demolitions or settlement building.

Hajj Mahmoud Mhanna, a 66-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank has lived in Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh camp for decades. Yet he has never received refugee status from the U.N.’s refugee agency UNHCR and lacks identity documents from Lebanon’s Political and Refugee Affairs Directorate and General Security.

Mhanna decided to remember the Nakba this year by going to Nijmeh Square in Sidon city center and raising a banner demanding that the Lebanese state and the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees UNWRA allow him refugee status.

“Imagine that your goal is to overcome the struggle of obtaining refugee status, which would settle your legal conditions and allow you to live a dignified and structured way,” he says.

“Our living and social conditions are harsh and exceed what our refugee counterparts suffer in the camps. But we will endure and be patient in order to achieve the ultimate goal, which is to return to Palestine.”

Mhanna’s unsettled status means that it is exceedingly hard to find work in Lebanon and that he cannot access UNWRA hospital facilities. He is also unable to travel outside of the country.

“I was working at a vegetable store once when a former labor minister demanded that I get a work permit,” he says. “I became unemployed because I was unable to obtain one.

“Basically we are considered nonexistent. We can’t demand our lost rights even, get marriage certificates, or register children.”

Thousands of Palestinian refugees like Mhanna live without status because they came to Lebanon during the 1970s with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They were then blocked from returning to where they came from – often Jordan or the Occupied Palestinian Territories – and remained stuck in Lebanon.

Writer Issam al-Halabi confirms that this category of statelessness is a huge problem when it comes to registering marriage and childbirth. Those without legal personality in Lebanon are “present, practically nonexistent.”

“Their lack of identity documents means that their normal life was ceased, they are deprived of completing their university education, of their freedom of movement, of hospitalization.

“UNRWA does not deal with them as refugees, and the Lebanese state refuses to give them any legal identification documents. At the most, they receive an identification card from Palestinian Embassy that is even not accepted officially.”

Palestinians say that the authorities refuse to recognize these cards because the Lebanese state in unwilling to increase the number of refugees on its territory. This is inconsistent with Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to be recognized as a legal person.

Somehow, despite the suffering and bleak outlook, Mhanna has not lost hope.

“The memory of the Nakba confirms to us that we are refugees, have rights, land and that we will return to it sooner or later. This is a divine and unavoidable promise and we will fight for our rights and we will escalate peaceful protest movements. We will never give up on or compromise on our return to Palestine,” he said.