Growing up in Pakistan, I have always heard of two places brutalized…Kashmir and Palestine. Kashmir is our own story. Everyone knows it. Palestine, however given the geographical distance is mentioned usually only in public rallies and in the ‘Khutba’ during the Jumma prayers. In Lebanon, the ordeal of Palestinians becomes a reality.

While passing through the Syrian-Lebanese border, I witnessed their misery for the first time. While the Lebanese passed through the border without any major hassle, over a hundred people were stopped from entering the territory. They had only one problem with their papers…they were Palestinians.

While I tried to find some people I could communicate with, someone shook me from behind. Maysa, whose name in Arabic means ‘someone who walks proud’, was a shriveled old lady with very sad eyes. She however had strength enough to shake me and turn me around. ‘Look at this!’ she said while showing me her Palestinian ID card, ‘this is my crime…the crime of my children and their children’. Her voice grew stronger as she continued,’ Russians can enter Syria, Americans can enter Syria, everybody but Palestinians can enter Syria…what did we do to deserve this?’

Maysa moved to Lebanon in 1957 and since then she occupied a Palestinian Refugee Camp near Beirut. The night Beirut was bombed, their neighborhood was shook up very badly. She and her family left with all they could and now they’re trapped with no where to go.

I kept thinking about Maysa, and the ordeal of her people. Apparently it’s a double jeopardy, being a Palestinian. You can’t live in Palestine safely and outside you don’t have any dignity to live at all. They’re second rate citizens everywhere.

Yesterday I met Hiba, a 21 year old English Literature Graduate residing in Omar Hamd School with her family. She used to live in Dahir, the area targeted by Israelis on a daily basis. They left because they feared for their life and rightly so because now, their apartment has been reduced to rubble.

Hiba seemed very bright and eager to help me. Even though I have met and spoken to a lot of people in Beirut, I haven’t met many people my own age so her company was very welcome. She was interested in knowing about my work and given her curiosity, I suggested that she should become a journalist. She shook her head in negative.

‘You don’t understand, I am a Palestinian. Here in Lebanon, if you’re a Palestinian Medical graduate, you can’t even start your own clinic. We live in Dahir,’ she continued, ‘that’s where most of the Palestinians live. That’s our world. We’re not welcome outside’.

Her statement came as a great surprise. I agree that I have seen people keeping their distance in Lebanon based on their sects, but Lebanon also has a tendency to overcome this bias. And yet, this form of discrimination not only exists, but has become a norm, a way of life.

And this discrimination isn’t new. Since 1948, after Israel started to push Palestinians out, they poured into neighboring Arab countries. Arab countries then had a unique opportunity to help these refugees either through force or through diplomacy. Instead they offered them resettlement schemes sponsored by UN Refugees Rehabilitation Fund. Palestinians accepted this along with Egyptian President Nasser’s claim that all traces of Zionism will be swept away.

Palestinians are a nation that has truly come this far on hopes and empty statements. They have suffered badly in this region; have been marginalized for decades now because their leaders mostly made all the wrong moves. PLO supported Iraq in Gulf War and thus the Kuwaiti reprisal came against the Palestinians settled in Kuwait. Things have been no different in Lebanon.
Palestinians have rarely been granted citizenship; most remain stateless treated as foreigners. Only in 1994, 25,000 of the 300,000 Palestinians were given citizenship… a small number present in Lebanon. They’re denied government jobs, getting into colleges and universities is tough. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a history lesson out of freedom movement by Muslims against British Colonial Rule in the Sub-Continent.
And yet, while I was still contemplating this discrimination, I found out something that warmed my heart to the core. Palestinian Refugee Camp in Rachidiye is accommodating Internally Displaced Lebanese with what little facilities they have. They have opened their homes to these people in their time of need. Over 1000 displaced southerners now live in school under the protection of people they had thus far considered refugees on their land.
For some people this maybe considered a humbling experience for Lebanese but I see it as a great gesture on Palestinians part. It is only through these little acts of humanity, that one truly starts believing in the beauty and cohesion of Muslim Ummah. And it is when I see these acts of faith that I believe these people will make it through this crisis as well.