by Daniel Xiao Wang

Created on: April 19, 2008

Many Arabic nations in the Middle East are struggling to deal with the problem of displaced Palestinian refugees. Several Non-governmental Organizations (NGO's) have volunteered time and money to help these refugees, with the United Nations finally creating the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in 1949.

The UN web site states that "for operational purposes, UNRWA has defined Palestine refugee as any person whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict."

Many of these refugees ended up in Lebanon where over the last 50 years their plight has not improved.

Forced Migration Online reports that "in 1948, Palestinians from the areas of the North of Palestinewere forced to leave their homes, due to Israeli military forces attacks and ethnic cleansing. These Palestinians fled over the border to Lebanon."

While some of the economically well off found their way to major cities, many of these refugees took up residence in refugee camps near the border. While the refugees were originally housed and fed tensions quickly mounted.

Between 1949-1958 the refugees enjoyed limited freedoms in Lebanon, but that was to change after the civil war in 1958. From 1959 onwards the Lebanese tried to discourage permanent settlements. They imposed martial law in 1962 and there was a 1969 uprising in the refugee camps.

In 1969 the Cairo Agreement granted the refugees several freedoms, but attacks against Israel led to retaliatory strikes that led to the destruction of several camps. The refugees living in these camps were displaced (if not slaughtered) and once again were without a home.

In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon, evacuated the PLO, and the situation of the refugees worsened.

In more recent times the descendants of these refugees still live in these camps. Many have been displaced several times. The local Lebanese population had grown accustomed to the camps and frequently traded with the Palestinians.

Freelance print and radio reporter Don Duncan repots that many citizens used the camps as a sort of half-price shopping destination, where, for example, bread cost 60 cents, as opposed to a dollar. But when the army and Islamic militants within the camp of Nahr el Bared engaged in a three month conflict that resulted in the near destruction of the camp things changed.

Many of the camps 30,000+ residents were forced

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