Daily Star - Displaced returning home, but causes of past conflicts remain - January 3, 2011

BEIRUT: Although displaced citizens have returned to their homes, the causes of past conflict in Lebanon remain “unresolved” and therefore the situation is precarious, according to a new international report released over the weekend.

There was no new internal displacement between 2009 and 2010, and the reprieve in hostilities is encouraging, the joint report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) and Norwegian Refugee Council (RDC) said.

According to interviews conducted by IDMC in November, all remaining internally displaced persons (IDP) from the 2006 summer war with Israel have now returned to their homes.

In 2006, the government reported that almost 17,000 people were still displaced from the Civil War and the 2006 Israeli invasion, in which a million people, over a quarter of the population, were forced to flee their towns and villages. Some 1,200 Lebanese, mainly civilians and 121 Israelis, mainly military, were killed.

The IDMC, however, found no figures for IDPs who might have sought settlement options other than return after many years of living in a different region.

“The lack of effective reconciliation or remedy for past human rights violations has stood in the way of people achieving durable solutions, and they do not trust that their situation will remain stable,” said the report, released last week. “Although many families have received financial support to repair or rebuild their war-damaged houses, many people are still afraid to return, preferring to stay in locations where they are among their own communities.”

In 1996 the government calculated the number of IDPs to be slightly over 500,000, with 300,000 or so remaining displaced by mid-2002. Prompted by compensation many opted to move to “inadequate conditions” in the southern Beirut suburbs instead of returning to their place of origin, the report added.

The fate of almost 27,000 Palestinian refugees displaced from Nahr al-Bared camp and its adjacent area was also highlighted. Almost four years after fighting between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Army, only 20 percent are thought to have returned, the report said.