Paint so as not to forget history. “And to tell, through art, what the Palestinian people are going through,” explains Rahif Almeari, with a serious gesture. At 13 years old, he is surely the youngest artist in Ein el Hilweh, the largest refugee camp in Lebanon, considered a kind of capital of the Palestinian community in this country. On pieces of wood, the teenager, the grandson of a carpenter who was expelled from his house in 1948, after the creation of the State of Israel, paints the symbols of his grandparents' homeland. “Israel wants to erase our culture, but it is my duty as an artist to paint the olive trees and the kufiya [el pañuelo palestino] to tell Europeans and all foreigners who we are,” he explains.
The 60,000 inhabitants of Ein el Hilweh, the scene of frequent clashes between factions, follow the news coming from Gaza with pain and fear because they feel that their survival and future are linked, more than ever, to what is happening in the Strip. “With what we are suffering, it makes no sense for us to confront each other,” says Rahif Almeari, showing the traces of bullet holes in his room. They are the memory of the last outbreak of violence in the countryside, which began last summer, after the assassination of General Abu Ashraf al Armushi, a senior leader of the Palestinian nationalist movement Al Fatah, the party to which the Palestinian Government chaired by Mahmoud Abbas belongs. His death was attributed to radical militias, ideologically linked to jihadist groups such as the Islamic State or Al Nusra, which over the years have found refuge in Ein el Hilweh.
In this wave of clashes between groups linked to Al Fatah and more extremist movements, at least 11 civilians died and more than 40 were injured. “They attacked the heart of Al Fatah's military wing with the intention of weakening us politically,” Yusef Zraihy, head of the party in the southern region of Lebanon, tells this newspaper.
But the war in Gaza put an end to this internal fighting and in mid-October the rival militias reached a tacit agreement to lay down their weapons. The talks are advancing with the mediation of the Lebanese Government, but the inhabitants of Ein el Hilweh fear that a future truce in the Strip will mean the return of violence in the countryside. Life on its streets has been paralyzed for almost seven months and the bombings and death tolls in Gaza permeate daily conversations in the market and prayers, amid a general helplessness at not being able to provide help to their compatriots in the Strip.
“All eyes are on Gaza and the political and security situation in the camps is calm. However, I fear that when the war ends a new conflict could break out,” says Samer Mannaa, a Palestinian activist. “And whoever controls Ein el Hilweh will control the refugee community,” he says.
Ein el Hilweh is located a few kilometers from the coastal city of Sidon in southern Lebanon. It is the largest of the 12 refugee camps created in this country after the Nakba, “catastrophe” in Arabic, the forced expulsion from their homes in 1948. Currently, and according to figures from the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), there are about 500,000 Palestinian refugees registered in Lebanon (those expelled more than 70 years ago and their descendants). But the same UN agency estimates that Actually, there are no more than 250,000 people living in the country., since the rest emigrated. Of this total, about 200,000 receive aid annually from this entity, which estimates that 80% of Palestinian refugees live below the poverty line.
A thousand shrapnel holes
With his gaze fixed on an open book on his knees, Rahif Almeari waits in front of the small candy stand that his family runs outside their home. The entire street, from the metal of the shop counter to the cardboard that protects it from the sun, is blurred by a thousand shrapnel holes, a landscape that is now part of the normality of the countryside. The boy leaves to look for the heavy and rusty keys to the doors of the houses in which his grandparents lived until 1948, the memory that the Palestinian refugees and his descendants always keep preciously. His father, Hussein Almeari, who was already born in the refugee camp, keeps a map of his family's land engraved in wood by his father. Like him, Almeari is also a carpenter and his son seems to have inherited that passion by painting with acrylic on the pieces of wood that he prepares for her.
My duty as an artist to paint the olive trees and the kufiya to tell Europeans and all foreigners who we are.
Rahif Almeari, Palestinian refugee
“I love Ein el Hilweh, it is my home. That's why it hurts me so much to see him like this,” says Hussein Almeari, pointing to the walls. When violence broke out last July, the family evacuated the camp. When he returned, at the end of October, the house was destroyed: numerous bullets were embedded in the walls and explosives penetrated the walls.
The home is located at a crossroads of neighborhoods, like the UNRWA schools, and was the battleground for rival militias. It is not the first time that the educational centers of Ein el Hilweh have been occupied and destroyed, explains Dorothee Klaus, director in Lebanon of this UN agency, to this newspaper. “Our response in the past was to increase fortification to protect children, but it has had the opposite effect and turned schools into attractive areas for military operations,” Klaus maintains.
UNRWA, which gives employment for 3,500 refugees in Lebanon, It provides healthcare, education, basic infrastructure, social assistance and sanitation. “The Government that hosts us has made it clear that it does not have the will or the capacity to adopt this responsibility, neither politically nor economically,” continues the director. The life of Palestinian refugees is governed by autonomous and independent rules of the Lebanese State, which in 1969—two years after the Six-Day War, which caused the second great wave of migration of Palestinians to Lebanon—ceded the political and administrative administration. security of the camps to the Palestinian community.
No rights
But the apparent Palestinian sovereignty in these fields of Lebanon is not accompanied by rights. National regulations deny refugees access to citizenship or property and also restrict their ability to hold positions in key professions such as medicine, law and engineering. “The Lebanese state deprives us of our basic human rights. We are not even second-class citizens, we are not even citizens,” criticizes Hatem Mokdade, an independent activist.
We are not even second-class citizens, we are not even citizens.
Hatem Mokdade, Palestinian activist
The disappointment felt in the camps also affects the United Nations agency, accused of immobility. “We did not abandon our right of return, but now we need electricity, basic services and solving corruption problems. UNRWA has been in an emergency situation for 75 years, but what we need is development,” says Mokdade.
Added to the complexity of the Palestinian phenomenon is the reality of a Lebanon in permanent crisis that since October has been waging a war against Israel on its southern border through the pro-Iranian militia Hezbollah. Added to this are the financial difficulties of UNRWA, now aggravated by the withdrawal of donors after Israel claimed that 12 employees of the UN agency in Gaza had participated in the attack by the Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, in which 1,200 Israelis died and more than 200 were taken hostage, of which a hundred are still in the hands of their captors in Gaza.
The United States Congress has instructed the Biden Administration not to restore UNRWA funding until at least March 2025. The United States is the agency's main funder, but other countries, such as Spain, have distanced themselves from the line marked by the United States and have announced additional aid to keep the agency operating. He Colonna Reportan independent investigation commissioned by the United Nations and led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, published on Monday April 22concluded that Israel has yet to provide evidence to support its accusations against the UN agency.
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