Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon: Individual Camps
Figure 1.--Here is a scene near the Bourj El-Barajneh during the Lebanese Civil War in 1987. The press caption read, "Tired Palestinian Woman: A tired Palestinian woman leaving along with her children the beseiged Palestunian rfugee camp of Bourj El-Barajneh Sunday with the help of Shiite Moslem gunmen who are ringing the camp. AMAL militiamen allowed civilians, maily women and children, trapped in the camp since several months to flee to a safer area." The photograph was dated February 15, 1987. In addition to the human tragedy we see is the fact that the Palestinians, the Lebanese Government, and UNRRA are doing nothing to settle the refugees. And as a result the childrn you see here are now raising their on children at these camps. No other group in history are still called refugees after three generations. The much larger number of Workld War II eefugees were mostly settkled after obky 3 years.
There are 12 Palistinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Most are located along the coast well away from the Israeli border. About half of the 450,000 registered Palestinian refugees live in these camps. Most were established during the First Arab Israeli War (1948) and then in the 1950s. They were meant to provide temporary housing and care, but now 70 years later, hundreds of thousands of stateless Palestinians still live in the camps in poor conditions. Rather than gradually resettling the refugees, the UNRRA camps have more refugees in them than when originally established, mdaning gthey are croded and have inadequate facilities.
The largest camp is Ain al-Hilweh which has some 54,000 refugees. the Beddawi camp established in 1955 has about 17,000 refugees.
The Burj Barajneh camp in 1948 accommodates refugees who fled from the Galilee in northern Palestine. The camp is located in the southern suburbs of Beirut. It suffered heavily throughout the Lebanese Civil War.
The El Buss camp established in 1939, began hosting Palestinians in 1948. It has over 11,000 refugees.
The Dbayeh camp established in 1956 hosts over 4,000 refugees.
The Mar Elias camp opened in 1952 is a small camp with less than 1,000 refugees.
The Mieh Mieh camp established in 1954, hosts more than 5,000 refugees.
The Nahr el-Bared camp established in 1949 had nearly 6,000 refugees.
The Rashidieh camp established in 1963 has over 31,000 refugees.
The Shatila camp established in 1949 hosts nearly 10,000 refugees.
The Wavel camp established in 1952 hosts nearly 9,000 refugees.
Christian militias under assault from Muslim militias and Palistunians conducted a massacre at Sabra and Shatila (1982), one of many tragedies of the Lebanese Civil War and related Israeli intervention. Three additional camps were destroyed during the Lebanese Civil War. A fourth was evacuated many years ago.
