I spent the last two days up in Nahr Al Bared. It’s not a place most have heard of, though it stood for 60 years as a monument to a a lost people. Dramatic as that sounds, it’s also true. And I say stood, because physically, at least, the old camp of Nahr Al Bared no longer exists.
Established in 1949 as a temporary home for Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel, Nahr Al Bared grew both in size and in permanence over the decades that followed. Though the camp population grew fourfold, the ground alloted for the camp’s existance grew barely at all. As new generations arrived, born as refugees of a state no longer in existence, the camp grew the only way it could: strait up. Ugly concete additions soon blotted out the sun for the camps earliest residents, a dark existance for thousands in a corner of northern Lebanon.
In 2007, militants within the camp clashed with the Lebanese Army. In the months that followed, the old part of the Nahr Al Bared camp was literally flattened. Today, 16 months since the end of the fighting, the camp’s 30,000 residents remain displaced, sharing homes with relatives in nearby camps, or crowded into tiny shelters provided by the UN Relief and Works Agency, responsible for the care of Palestinian refugees. I met a man today who shared a 36 square foot home with his parent and six brothers and sisters. They, like many here, have given up wondering when they might return to the homes they lost in the old camp.
It is difficult to describe the anger, frustration, and hopelessness that pervades a Palestinian refugee camp. They are hot beds of disaffected youth with no future, and no country. Though eager, young men within cannot find work. Young women have even fewer opportunities. But for the last two days I have been amazed at the resilience of the people of Nahr Al Bared, who find a way to make it, day after day, in a place few of us could even begin to imagine.
February 11th, 2009 | by David in Travel
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
