BEIRUT: The Palestinian Embassy in Beirut was awash with black and white over the weekend, as the organizers of a youth conference handed out keffiyehs as gifts to all participants.
On the sidelines of the meeting, young Palestinians talked to The Daily Star about their frustration with the support networks for refugees in Lebanon, and the endemic corruption which they believe tars international relief projects aimed to help them.
Mohammad al-Yassir, whose family fled Jaffa during the 1948 war, is tired of the constant cycle of youth conferences, which, he said, serve as little more than talking shops.
“These youth gatherings are a waste of time because every year they do these, and, perhaps in some ways they are helpful, but the overall result: Nothing changes,” Yassir said.
“They say they will do this, they will do that: they will pay our university fees, but nothing changes. All the students are working nights, working weekends, working overtime to pay their fees.”
Having graduated in computer science in 2008, Yassir spent the next two and a half years looking for work, and is now employed at a medical company in Beirut.
He attended Saturday’s conference, for Palestinian diaspora youth at the request of the Association of Palestinian scouts and female guides, and supported by UNDP, because he wants people to remember their cause.
“Maybe it’s like a need to speak of our pain, to tell people what we are going through. And at first you feel relief, but then we go home and nothing happens. But we have so much to speak about.”
His friend Ahmad Ali, who also graduated from the Beirut Arab University several years ago, believes that the conferences are often little more than an opportunity for various actors to show that they are working for the Palestinian cause.
“These groups who hold these conferences want to show the world that they are helping Palestinians, and asking about their problems. But in reality it is just words on paper. Nothing happens,” said Ali.
At a workshop held later in the day at the Burj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut, what was described as a chance for youth to discuss with each other the difficulties they face in education and employment turned into a lecture by an elder member of the community on the history of the Palestinian struggle.
“We need to be able to speak out for ourselves,” said Ali, who has just found work as an accountant for Roumieh prison, after being unemployed for two years after graduation.
However, he is quietly optimistic that eventually something will come out of the work they are doing now – that if their own messages are disseminated, and not the words of others, that it will make a difference.
But for now, they believe their plight is being ignored, not just in Lebanon, but globally.
“The whole world seems to have agreed that Palestinian people don’t have rights,” Yassir said.
While global powers allege to abide by the U.N. declaration of human rights, he adds, Palestinians are denied the most vital components.
While the employment law was changed last year to formally grant Palestinians the same working rights as foreigners, there are still many obstacles remaining.
“We are human people but we don’t have human rights. It’s like we came from Mars,” Yassir said.
Zeina Hasan, whose father left Palestine during the 1967 war, and whose mother is Lebanese, summarized it thus, “We cannot own a home, we cannot have fixed employment and we still cannot work in many companies.”
Palestinians are still not allowed to work as engineers, doctors or lawyers, and, denied the right to fixed-term contracts, cannot benefit from retirement funds. And Hasan cannot benefit from Lebanese citizenship, as women are not able to pass their nationality onto their children.
“We want Lebanese citizenship, but it’s not to forget our country,” Yassir said. “We just want to be able to live with dignity, to work like other people, to provide better futures for our children. No one wants their children to suffer like they did.”
He added that while he has happy memories of life in Lebanon, he dreams that his children will know Palestine.
“I dream that they will be able to live in their country. We have memories here, but it is not our country. Whatever we do we are still refugees,” said Yassir.
They are also skeptical of many of the institutions allegedly created to help the living standards of Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, of which there are around 455,000 registered with UNRWA.
Ali urges interested international donors or countries to work directly with the Palestinians, and not go through any middle-men.
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