Thus, the repercussions with their economic and social dimensions have had dramatic effects on the state and society in Lebanon, not to mention their effects on the Palestinian community inside and outside camps. In the midst of this rush, we shall highlight briefly the effects of the Syrian crisis on the life of Lebanon’s Palestinians and the Palestinians coming from Syria.
Before the outbreak of the crisis, the Palestinian community in Syria was deemed to be one of the most stable and integrated Palestinian refugee communities into their host community in the Arab Mashriq. The Palestinian refugees in Syria enjoyed special legal status that granted them a wide range of economic, social, cultural and civil rights, which came very close to full citizenship while retaining their Palestinian nationality. This special legal status had exceeded according to many experts the ceiling of rights set by the 1951 Refugee Convention or those stipulated in the 1965 Casablanca Protocol.
Needless to say, the donor community, as well as Lebanon as a host state, considers the task of providing relief for Palestinians displaced from Syria to Lebanon, if not protecting them, to fall within the remit of the UNRWA, especially that they are originally refugees registered with it in Syria. It is a known fact that the High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR does not provide any legal protection or relief to Palestinian refugees residing in UNRWA’s five areas of operation and that is for generally known reasons relating to its mandate not including those refugees pursuant to Article 1D of the 1951 Convention on refugees and article 7(c) of the Statute of the UNHCR itself.
Since the outbreak of the crisis in 2011, the number of Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria to Lebanon has been on the rise, and reached following the battle of Yarmouk Camp (December 16, 2012) and in early 2013 roughly 80,000 displaced, coming down to 44,000 by the end of 2014. According to UNRWA estimates, the figure at the end of November 2015 was 42,000 displaced persons, while some Palestinian NGOs estimate the number of displaced persons at much less, currently not exceeding 35,000. More than half of those displaced have come from Yarmouk Camp.
According to data provided at the onset of the displacement by UNRWA and some Palestinian NGOs (The National Institution of Social Care and Vocational Training, also known as Beit Atfal Assumoud), the majority of the displaced persons are over the age of 18 (60%), and women accounted for most of them (51%). The biggest part of them went to Saida (32%), while the rest were distributed almost equally among the other regions: Tyre, Beirut, Beqaa and Tripoli, both inside and outside the camps. In addition, most of them headed to the camps (54%) compared to (46%) outside of camps, with Beqaa receiving the biggest share of those living outside camps (33%), followed by Saida (32%). The Ain al-Hilweh camp got the biggest percentage of those who went to camps (28%), while the remaining displaced persons are distributed among the Mieh Mieh camp (Saida) and other camps in Tyre, Beirut, Tripoli and the Beqaa. Overall, most of them settled initially with relatives or acquaintances living inside camps (45%), or in rented houses inside and outside camps.
The reasons for the decline in the number of Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria are many, including: tough restrictions imposed by the Lebanese state on the entry of Palestinians into Lebanon since the second quarter of 2014; the temptation for many of them to migrate abroad and/or join their children or relatives who had left there before them; returning to Syria due to their inability to afford the high costs of living in Lebanon; the scarcity of the assistance offered by NGOs, the PLO and Palestinian factions; and the reduction of the aid provided by the UNRWA for those displaced persons following its adoption in September 2014 of the so-called “eligibility criteria” and that led at the time to cutting off aid from 1,100 displaced households in one go.
Although it was expected that the international donors would enable host refugee communities in camps to absorb the Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria and adapt to the state of emergency by providing adequate support to UNRWA so that it is able to carry out its humanitarian duty properly, the response of those donors did not live up to the level of the crisis. In this regard, the UNRWA Director in Lebanon Matthias Schmale issued a statement (May 22, 2015) in which he announced the intention of the agency to stop emergency cash assistance for housing for the displaced starting July 2015. Earlier (May 14, 2015), the UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl declared the intention of UNRWA to cut services offered by UNRWA in various fields in its five areas of operation due to its budget deficit. It is worth noting that the emergency appeal of the UNRWA relating to Syria mobilized a mere 21% of the funds required for 2015.
One of the main reasons for UNRWA’s budget crisis may be the big financial burden incurred by the key countries of the donor community as a result of unprecedented migration waves from Syria, and the Arab region in general, mainly to Europe, as part of the repercussions of the Syrian crisis, which turned the support required for Palestinian refugees in general, through UNRWA and others, into less of a priority.
As a result, the crisis of the Palestinian displacement from Syria to Lebanon has led to exacerbating the difficulties and pressures that Palestinian communities hosting the displaced persons suffered originally, especially in the camps that absorbed relatively large numbers (such as the Ain al-Hilweh camp). More importantly, the circumstances of the crisis have caused a large number of crises and living problems for the displaced Palestinian themselves.
As for the camps that took in large numbers of displaced Palestinian families from Syria, they were already suffering economic, social and spatial marginalization and problems that have accumulated over six decades: poverty, unemployment, fragility of the infrastructure, overcrowding, absence of decent housing, poor environmental health conditions, etc. The arrival of the new displaced persons in those camps with high population densities only exacerbated the severity of those problems and increased the pressure on the already poor services, fragile infrastructure and the camps’ limited resources. For example, the Ain al-Hilweh camp, which was already overcrowded with its own population and which is under a kilometer and a half square meters in area, absorbed around 2,400 displaced Palestinian families at the beginning of the crisis, a figure that went down to 1,400 families in mid 2015. Add to this the displacement of more Syrian families to it, some of whose members resided in the camp before the crisis and who worked as casual menial workers in and around Saida or owned small commercial shops inside the camp. The same applies to the Badawi Camp whose population almost doubled as a result of the displacement of part of the population of the Nahr el-Bared camp to it, and this before it took in the newly arrived displaced persons.
In a related context, the conditions of the crisis and its circumstances overwhelmed the active Palestinian sides in the host Palestinian community (embassy, factions, NGOs) and which were not adequately prepared to deal with this type of emergency and complex crises, despite previous experience in dealing with similar, albeit not identical, crises (the Israeli invasions, the displacement of the Nahr el-Bared camp). Overall, the Palestinian performance in dealing with the crisis has been characterized by disarray and poor coordination.
Palestinians displaced from Syria to Lebanon have faced many difficulties and challenges in their attempts to adapt to and cope with the new displacement conditions relating to housing and living conditions, education, health, freedom of movement, legal residency in Lebanon and even their personal and social security:
The winter of 2015, which saw a lot of blizzards, was harsh on the displaced communities in the Beqaa region that was hosting around 16% of the displaced families, i.e. roughly 2,260 households. The tents and zinc sheet roofs were carried away and water flooded the houses. The absence of heating caused the spread of diseases (such as colds, respiratory infections and asthma), particularly among the children and elderly. The reduction in assistance, poor preparation on the part of the UNRWA and the relevant Palestinian parties, slowness and difficulty of relief processes due to the wide distribution of the families in the region exacerbated the severity of the problems. In Badawi camp, dozens protested in front of UNRWA centers (January 5, 2015) against UNRWA’s delay in distributing winter aid.
With regard to education, the UNRWA had provided in its schools, which operate on a double-shift basis, places for displaced students of all levels. Those who were able to complete the Syrian school curriculum for the secondary level were reluctant to go to Syria to sit for official exams for fear of not being able to return due to the measures taken by the Lebanese General Security to restrict the freedom of Palestinians entering from Syria into Lebanon. Add to that the slim chances of enrolling in Lebanese Universities for those who do obtain a high school Baccalaureate, while free university education was available to them in Syria before the crisis.
In addition, ninth graders (who also have to sit for official Brevet exams) who had studied the Lebanese curriculum also faced similar difficulties relating to the need to settle their legal status in Lebanon with regard to residence permit and payment of the required fees and authentication of their previous school certificates from Syria as a precondition for sitting for the official examinations. Moreover, students who had studied the Syrian curriculum and wanted to sit for the exams in Syria faced the dilemma of settling their residence status in Lebanon to guarantee their return.
Moreover, there is a widespread phenomenon of dropping out of school among displaced students at all levels, as the living conditions of many of them have forced them to join the labor market under the unjust conditions characterizing the child labor in Lebanon in general.
Any comprehensive and serious study of the reality of education of the Syrian Palestinians will reveal over the coming years the deterioration of the indicators related to education.
Apart from the security problems, that could reach up to detention or ban on entry, that Palestinians displaced from Syria face, especially the young men, for reasons to do with requirements for legal residency, those who did move into the camps faced the usual security problems of fighting inside camps between certain armed groups that have become known (such as the Ain al-Hilweh camp clashes, August 2015). These conditions, and under the pressure of difficult living conditions, led some displaced young men to be subjected to blackmail by one faction or another to join their ranks. There have been recorded cases of denouncing some young men to Lebanese security authorities by some fighting factions in the framework of Lebanese-Palestinian security cooperation.
In addition to the aforementioned, cases of illegal migration from Lebanese ports (Tripoli) and some ports in the South towards Cyprus and Turkey are on the rise. There have been cases recorded of some migrating families being arrested or detained by Lebanese security forces. The migration of husbands and sons has led to an increase in the number of displaced households provided for by a woman (the wife or sisters). In Ain al-Hilweh camp alone there were 253 households supported by a woman by the end of 2015 and 270 more households in Beirut’s camps (according to the annual report of The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria AGPS, January 2016). This situation has imposed additional economic, social and psychological burdens. On the other hand, this migration has led to more family breakdown with all that it entails in social problems resulting from the collapse of the traditional value system of normal times. This is a common phenomenon in refugee and immigrant communities in all places and times.
We conclude by saying that Syrian Palestinians have been subjected, like other Syrians, to the devastating consequences of the Syrian crisis on the fabric of their society, particularly in camps, and their social well-being and various aspects of their daily lives, which have forced them, like other Syrians, either to be displaced inside Syria seeking relative safety or taking refuge in neighboring countries, particularly Lebanon, in search of a safe roof. At the same time, many of them have migrated abroad, risking their lives and the lives of their children in death boats and international border crossings, in search of a decent life. There are those who made it to safety and those who did not reach their destination and were swallowed up by the sea.