Palestinian Refugee Camp, Part I: A Brief History

As some of you may or may not know, I’ve been volunteering at a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Southern Beirut for the past month or so. But before I describe to you what my experience has been like working there, I think it’s important to give a brief history of how the situation came to be that these Palestinian people ended up living here. Needless to say, the history of this area is very politically charged and there is no shortage of versions of how this history has unfolded. Since one could write encyclopedia length dissertations on the history of what is now modern Israel, I will try, for sanity sake, to keep the earlier history of the area brief and then expand a bit once we get to around World War I. But first, buckle up, because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Archeological evidence shows that people have lived along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea in what is now modern day Lebanon and Israel, from as early as 10,000 BC. The land was fertile and the fishing was good, so these early folks stuck around for a while. Then, between 3,000 BC and 2,000 BC a wave of immigrants started showing up. These immigrants were probably the Canaanites who migrated from the Arabian Peninsula (modern day Saudi Arabia) and the Mesopotamia area (modern day Iraq) in search of better natural resources. Around 2,100 BC they came and settled along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Canaanites called the area they settled in Canaan, go figure. It is around this time also that Egypt claimed this coastal area as part of its empire. Religiously speaking, Abraham (of biblical notoriety) is believed to have migrated to Canaan during this wave of migration. Though Abraham is considered to be the father of the three major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) chances are he was a polytheist and like the rest of the people he lived with believed in multiple gods. Religious texts such as the Bible speak of how Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, who would later be called Israel, would lead his people south from Canaan to Egypt during a famine. Jacob headed to Egypt because he and his people were living under the Egyptian empire and were able to live and work along the fertile Nile River valley. Then years later, possibly around 1,200BC, Moses, who was a descendent of the people who migrated to Egypt with Jacob, would lead his people back north from Egypt to Canaan. It is Moses who is credited with bringing the first concepts of monotheism or worship of one god to this area, but it wouldn’t be until years later that it would take hold. By the time Moses got back into town, Egyptian rule had waned and the area was divided between many different local rulers. Then the Sea People sailed in. You heard me right, the Sea People. The Sea People were possibly from Aegean or Crete, out in the Mediterranean Sea. They are now known as the Philistines. This was followed by Alexander the Great, the Greeks and the Romans. You pick your favorite. Somewhere around, oh, day 1 in the year 0, by some people’s calendars, Jesus popped up. Then in the year 570 AD or 0 in other people’s calendars, Mohammed was born way to the southeast in the Arabian hamlet of Mecca. And in the year 636 or 66, depending on who’s doing the counting, the armies of Islam showed up and within a few years the Muslim religion had spread throughout most of the Middle East and the area that was known as Canaan was now known as Palestine. Keep in mind that each time one of these invaders showed up, whether Greek, Roman or Muslim it wasn’t pretty. Lots of people were killed. Alexander is still reviled in parts of the Middle East for the slaughter that he brought. And who could forget the Crusades. Probably the bloodiest invaders of them all. In the year 1,095 AD, the Catholic Pope Urban II called for a recapture of Jerusalem, sending a wave of Crusaders on a path of death and destruction through the Middle East, including the massacre of entire cities and towns. The Crusaders weren’t prejudiced; they’d kill any Muslim, Jew or Christian that came into their path. By around 1,300 AD and three waves of Crusades later, the local Muslim armies and the Mamluk armies of Egypt finally drove the Crusaders back out of the Middle East once and for all. The Mamluks, who were rebel slaves from Egypt, would then rule the area for almost 300 bloody years until they were defeated in battle by the Ottoman Turks, who originated in present day Turkey. By 1516 AD, the Ottoman Turks occupied Palestine and much of the Middle East and it would stay that way until the early 1900s. At its peak in 1566, the Ottoman Empire spanned from Austria in the west to Persia (modern day Iran) in the east and the Saudi Peninsula in the south. They also controlled much of North Africa and the Western Mediterranean. But by 1600, they had lost North Africa and Persia and were slowly declining in the Middle East. By the 1800s, France and England would start to chisel away at the Ottoman Empire little by little and begin colonizing the Middle East in the process. As the Ottomans fell more and more into debt, the European powers would prop them up and control or influence most of the Empire. When World War I broke out, the Ottoman Empire sided with the Germans, mostly in hopes of getting the British out of their hair. The British, in response, went around the Middle East promising local leaders that each of them would be the “King of the Arabs” when the war was over if they would help England overthrow the Ottomans. The plan worked, though Britain never really planned on following through on its promises. At the same time they were working these deals with local leaders, England and France were shaking hands on how they were going to carve up the Middle East when the war was over. With the end of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman dynasty, France took control of Syria and Lebanon. England took control of Egypt, Palestine, Transjordan (modern day Jordan) and Iraq. There would be no King of the Arabs. This all with the approval of the recently created League of Nations (the predecessor to the United Nations) which consisted mainly of European powers. The Arab people, who had fought to free themselves from the abusive Ottoman rule, now found themselves under British or French control. But that was only the beginning. Now things were about to get really sticky.
To understand what happened next, we need to go back a few years. For centuries, people of the Jewish faith have dreamt about returning to their religious “homeland” of Canaan/Palestine/Israel. This includes many people of the Jewish faith who were of European ancestry. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, prejudice against Jews began to spread across Europe. Then in 1896 an Austrian journalist named Theodore Herzl wrote a book called “Der Judenstaat” that basically stated that European Jews needed to establish their own homeland outside of Europe or face further persecution in Europe. He then formed the first International Zionist Congress, which met in Switzerland, in order to find a place to call the Jewish Homeland outside of Europe. In 1903, the British offered to give the Zionists the country of Uganda. Yes, that Uganda, in Africa. Seriously, I wouldn’t lie to you about this stuff. This, of course, was rejected by the Congress on the grounds of being asinine. The Zionist Congress declared that they would pursue building their Homeland in Palestine, whose inhabitants were, since the 7th century, mostly Muslim Arabs. Waves of Jewish immigrants began moving to Palestine, which was, at the time, still part of the Ottoman Empire. Some of the newly arrived Jewish immigrants obtained land legally by purchasing it from local Arabs, but many others took land forcibly with the help of Jewish gangs such as the Irgun, Haganah and the Stern Gang. These gangs, which started as small groups of immigrant farmers trying to protect themselves against attacks from the area’s original inhabitants would eventually grow into paramilitary organizations and partake in acts such as blowing up hotels and massacring large groups of unarmed civilians.
By the time the British took control of Palestine, tensions between the Muslim Arabs who lived in Palestine and the newly arrived European Jews had reached a boiling point and in the wake of riots and fighting, the Brits decided they needed to make a decision. That decision was called the Balfour Declaration and it gave the Zionists a promise to establish a Homeland for the Jews in Palestine. However, this document never stated any specifics, such as boundaries or political structure. And to add to the confusion, the document contradicted the McMahon White Paper for Arab Independence which the British had signed just two years prior.
Then came the Holocaust of World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors moved to Palestine. The Palestinian Arab population felt as though it were getting the brunt of a European problem. While much of the friction was differences in religion, this problem started out as an Arab-European issue not so much as a Muslim-Jewish issue. In 1947, the British, realizing that they had a nightmare on their hands, handed the whole deal over to the United Nations. In 1948, the UN in turn voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, making Jerusalem an international city. The Jews accepted the proposal, the Arabs rejected it, the British said “We’re outta here!” and bailed from Palestine, the Jews declared independence and the war was on!
The details of this war are still a point of contention, but when it was over hundreds of thousands of civilian Arabs had fled the fighting and taken refuge in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Most of whom are still there in refugee camps today. A cease fire was called and the newly formed country of Israel had control of most of what was formerly Palestine. Egypt had control of a small strip of land in the southern part of Palestine called Gaza and Jordan had a chunk along the Dead Sea called the West Bank (because it is the west bank of the Jordan River). To this day, the refugees that fled have not been offered many of the basic rights that the citizens of their host countries have, leading to much instability and conflict within those countries. Those Arabs that remained within Israel were relocated to the areas held by Egypt or Jordan.
In 1967, Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran, a narrow stretch of water on the Red Sea that is the only Indian Ocean access for Israel. Israel in response made a pre-emptive attack on Syria, Jordan and Egypt and seized control of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and the Egyptian area of Sinai. This was called the Six Day War, since it happened so quickly.
Geographically speaking, the Golan Heights is an area in the northeastern part of present day Israel and it shares a border with Syria and Lebanon. The West Bank is on the East side of present day Israel and shares its border with Jordan. Gaza is a small strip of land in the southern part of present day Israel and shares a border with Egypt. Sinai is a large peninsula of land in northeastern Egypt and shares a border with Israel. For any further geographical questions, buy a map! I say this half jokingly because if you have any interest in learning about what goes on in the Middle East you need to look at an atlas of the area to really get a sense of it and to see how complicated land issues are there. It will also help give you a size reference. Like knowing that Israel is the size of New Jersey or that Lebanon is smaller than Connecticut. Or that Israel only has about 7 million people in it, less than that of metropolitan Los Angeles.
In retaliation for the land that Israel took in the 1967 war, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on two fronts in 1973. This was called the Yom Kippur War, since it took place on that Jewish holy day. Egypt made initial gains in the attack; however, Israel was eventually able to repel both Egypt and Syria. There was little land gained by either side and history seems to look on this war as a draw. During the 1973 war, Egypt and Syria received financial and military aid from Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan (financial only) and the Soviets. The Israelis received financial and military aid from France and the US. One factor in Israel being able to fend off Egypt and Syria’s attack was that US military technology was superior to that of the Soviet weapons being supplied. But the determining factor in US aid was by far US intelligence surveillance planes which gave Israel an enormous advantage over Egypt and Syria who were using aged radar systems.
An interesting story that would surface years later is that when the United Nations finally ordered a ceasefire in the 1973 War, the Israeli troops in Egypt kept advancing to try and take the main road between Cairo and the Suez Canal. Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Head of State, would then send a wire to US President Richard Nixon in the middle of the night stating that the Soviet Union was looking for the US to work jointly with the Soviets in ensuring the ceasefire would be complied with and that if the Israelis kept advancing, the Soviets would consider taking steps unilaterally. This wire was received in the US by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who would then contact White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig (yes, the same guy who said he was in charge after Ronald Reagan was shot, when in fact proper protocol showed that there were actually two other people ahead of Haig). At the time, Nixon was neck deep in the Watergate Scandal and things weren’t looking too good. When asked whether or not Nixon should be wakened, Haig said “No” voicing his opinion that Tricky Dick was in no condition to make weighty decisions. Haig would then send a conciliatory response back to Brezhnev, signing Nixon’s name to it, and then raise the US Defense Condition (DEFCON) from four to three. The Soviets would detect that the US had raised the DEFCON level and issued a statement asking whether the US was really willing to start World War III over Egypt and Israel. What a mess.
Besides bringing us a step closer to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviets, there are some very important things that occurred in the wake of this war. The first is that the United States quadrupled its financial and military aid to Israel, raising the amount to $2.2 Billion annually. (It is currently up to about $3 Billion annually, all of which is now military aid. The total nears $3.5 Billion if you count money paid to Egypt and Jordan for compliance to Israel and money to Palestine for infrastructure reconstruction due to Israeli bombing). The second was the Oil Embargo against the US by several Middle Eastern countries for our support of Israel which caused the “energy crisis” in the 1970s. The third was the 1978 Camp David summit that brought a temporary peace agreement between Egypt and Israel and saw the handing of the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt. The forth was the increase in infighting between Arab states between those that sought treaties with Israel and those that did not. This included the assassination of Anwar Sadat of Egypt for going to the Camp David talks and entering into a treaty with Israel. The other Arab states saw this as a betrayal. And lastly, was, as we saw from the Brezhnev/Haig incident, the Middle East became more and more of a chess board for the US and the Soviet Union’s political games.
The military aid that the US gives Israel is important in understanding why much of the Arab world has a dislike for American politics. Since we supply Israel with the weapons that Israel uses in their fighting with the Palestinians and other Middle Eastern countries, we are seen as the same as Israel. It is also important to know that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn’t just affect Israelis and Palestinians. It affects every country in the Middle East because these other countries not only share a religious heritage with Palestinians but they also are the ones who have to deal with all the refugees that this conflict has created. It is an ever present topic here in the Middle East.
After the 1973 War and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), one of many Palestinian political entities, began a campaign of violence against Israel. Many of these acts were seen as terrorist acts to the western world, the most notable being the murder of 11 athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 1971, King Hussein of Jordan felt that the PLO’s militancy was a growing threat to his country’s governance and ordered a massacre of refugees in Jordan’s camps. Those that survived fled to Lebanon where they now still reside in refugee camps in southern Lebanon. It is from this wave of refugees that the political/militant group Hezbollah was formed. One of their main political platforms is the destruction of Israel. So Lebanon, too, feels the conflict’s influence in its politics.
Note: Hezbollah is a Palestinian political/militant group that has gained political power in Lebanon. Hamas is a Palestinian political/militant group that came to power in the Israeli Occupied Territory of Gaza. They are two different groups in two different countries. Though many of these groups share a dislike for Israel, they don’t always agree with each other.
In 1987, during a popular Palestinian uprising, news footage around the world showed stone throwing Arab youths being gunned down by well armed, Israeli soldiers. This news footage did some damage to Israel’s reputation.
In 1993, a peace talk in Norway between the PLO and Israel brought about mutual recognition, a small but important step. This would then lead to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank being handed over to Palestinian control with the PLO and Yasser Arafat as the main political party. The new agreement left a lot of issues unresolved, such as the status of Jerusalem and what would become of the four million Palestinian refugees that were spread out in camps across the Middle East. It also failed to address Syria’s claim to the Golan Heights and Hezbollah activity in southern Lebanon. These issues continue to this day.
In 2000, an attempt at a Two State Solution, which was supported by Israel and some of the other Arab countries, was dismissed by the PLO.
Since 2000, violence has gone back and forth between Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians with their suicide bombings and the Israelis with their full scale, aerial bombardments. You can pick which ever event you feel is the catalyst for any one of the many outbreaks of violence. Some of your choices are: Palestinian rockets fired into Israel; Israel’s indiscriminant bombing of civilian populations, schools and hospitals; Palestinians kidnapping Israeli soldiers; Israeli’s military assassinating Palestinian politicians; Israeli bulldozers destroying Palestinian houses on currently agreed upon Palestinian land to make way for Israeli suburbs; Palestinian suicide bombers; Israeli leaders insulting Islam on the Temple Mount. The list goes on and on.
In 2004, after years of fighting and the death of Arafat, Israel and the PLO shook hands on a “Road to Peace” agreement which saw the withdraw of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and the release of many Palestinian political prisoners. Don’t get your hopes up yet, though. Since then, Israel has begun building its massive “Security Fence” much of which is being built on land that is not Israel’s and more Israeli settlements are popping up in Palestinian territories. In retaliation for this, rockets regularly get fired into Israeli settlements from Palestinian neighborhoods, which is the dilemma that occurred this past winter, resulting in Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza. The invasion occurred, coincidentally just prior to a close Israeli election. Now that the elections are over the rockets are still being shot as they were long before the elections, but neither the media nor the politicians seem to care.
So what is the future for Israel and Palestine? You’d need a Ouija Board to figure that one out because your guess is as good as anyone’s. The current international debate focuses only on the Two State Solution that I mentioned earlier. A poll in 2007 showed, not surprisingly, that given any option, Israelis wanted their country and the Occupied Territories to be free of Palestinians and the Palestinians wanted the Israelis gone from all of traditional Palestine lands. No shit. I’m sure someone was paid a lot of money to put that poll together. The poll then went further and addressed the issue of deciding between a One State Solution and Two State Solution. 70% of all Palestinians supported a One State Solution while 82% of Israelis supported a Two State Solution. Just for clarification, Palestinians currently have no right to vote in Israel. A Two State Solution would mean that Israel kept all of the lands it had acquired over the years and the Palestinians would have control over the presently occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. This would also mean that the refugees who fled back in 1948 would have no right to return to their homes and would now become the responsibility of either the countries they were in or to jam into one of the smaller Occupied Territories. A One State Solution would mean a single state in Israel (historic Palestine), including Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, where all people, Israeli, Palestinian or anyone else who wanted to join them, including the returning refugees, would live with citizenship and equal rights, without regard to ethnicity or religion. Hmm, smells a little bit too much like democracy to me. One of the main reasons the One State Solution is opposed by Israeli politicians is that if Palestinians were given the right to vote, they would have a majority in the political landscape, thereby posing a threat to Israel’s theocracy. Hmmm, smells a lot like South Africa.
Presently, though, there’s not much progress being made towards anything. Meanwhile, the four million plus refugees are still hanging in limbo, including the 400,000 who live in the ghetto camps of Lebanon. Sixty years later they are still jammed into these camps with no citizenship, no right to vote, no work, no land to own and no country. Most don’t even have running water. I figured this was as good a place as any to go and volunteer.