The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA believes that Lebanon has been unreasonably slow to integrate its minority Palestinian population, however their reasoning or more precisely their wariness of Palestinian refugees stems from the 1970’s expulsion of Yasser Arafat from Jordan. His ‘Palestinian Liberation Organisation’ migrated to southern Lebanon where it began a series of minor attacks into neighboring Israel. The Israeli military responded firing into Lebanon, wounding, killing and damaging the property of native Lebanese. The Lebanese government has consequently been unwilling to allow other Palestinian refugees any freedoms that could jeopardize the stability of their country.
Compared to other countries in the Middle East, Lebanon is uncharacteristically strict: Jordan, which has the largest Palestinian Diaspora in the Middle East, with approximately 1.9 million, grants full citizenship, social security and healthcare to all Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian community in general has been comprehensively included in Jordanian society, with 45% of Jordanians being of Palestinian heritage. Despite these progressions, most Palestinians still live in the UN run refugee camps on the border near Israel, even though they have every opportunity to move to other parts of the country. Conversely, in Syria, where the Palestinian Diaspora accounts for less than 3% of the state’s population, Palestinians have almost completely integrated into mainstream Syrian society, receiving health and education benefits, the rights to work and own property, yet are not allowed citizenship. Both cases highlight crucially how much more Lebanon has to do to compliment this latest bill.
While within the Middle East Palestinian refugees are treated with specific degrees of care, the rest of the world finds it easier to accommodate them under UN Geneva Convention Refugee laws. Palestinian Diaspora communities living outside the Middle East tend to be very small; the EU nations only have 100000 registered refugees. For refugees residing in Britain, they tend to be sucked into the larger Arab community and have the same rights to work, education, and free healthcare as other immigrants. Another crucial feature of these intra-Middle East diasporas is that these communities tend to be constructed of mostly Palestinians who fled during the 1940’s Zionist conflict, as well as their offspring. This means that home feels more like the country they were raised in than the country of their national origins. This sentiment is particularly true of the Palestinian community living in Chile. This is the largest Palestinian Diaspora outside of the Middle East, and perhaps also one of the oldest; some Palestinians claiming descendance from immigrants in the early 20th century. They number around 500 000, mostly residing in Santiago. Interestingly many of these immigrants are Christians, and have created their own Christian centre within the larger Palestinian community in the city. Maintaining a strong sense of origin has been incorporated into the community spirit of the Diaspora but this has not hindered Palestinian integration into Chilean politics, culture and education. They have full citizenship rights and have succeeded in becoming the leading campaign centre in South America for Palestinian refugee rights in Israel. Intermarriage is also common with only 30% of the Diaspora population having two parents of Palestinian origin at the most recent census. This March, a law was passed establishing a legal framework for the treatment of new refugees, and Chile has taken on a new prerogative as a ‘safe haven’ for people of all backgrounds fleeing violence and strifein their home-nations. The law was christened in April with the acceptance of 117 Palestinian refugees from the no-mans-land between Iraq and Syria.
Generally speaking, the Palestinian Diaspora has a great many opportunities internationally. The Lebanon result is a credit to their campaigning for equal rights in all countries of residence, and certainly Lebanon has quite a few examples in and outside of the Middle East to pick from if it is looking for a successful structure to integration. However, what role this Diaspora will play in creating a Palestinian state remains murky, and may yet affect those Palestinians still struggling to settle in their native land.
Posted on August 19, 2010
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