Every so often in life you meet people who leave a real and lasting impression. Last year, I travelled to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon with Norway’s largest trade union – Fagforbundet – and Norwegian Peoples Aid. There we met Ahed Baar.
Ahed’s first memories are from the narrow alleyways of Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. He was born and raised there. In 1948, his parents and 750,000 other Palestinians were forced to flee their homes in Palestine by the Israeli war machine. They were told it would only be temporary. The family has lived in exile since. 70 years in exile.
In 1982, when Ahed was 16 years old, Israel invaded Lebanon. The aim was to destabilize the country and crush the Palestinian resistance movement. Beirut and the refugee camps were the main target and the civilian population was considered collateral damage.
Under massive military pressure, the Palestinian guerillas were forced to withdraw. Ahed and other teenagers moved with them, ending up in the Bekaa valley. The Israeli offensive forced Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian leadership out of Lebanon.
Who can forget the dramatic footage as ships loaded with young guerrillas sailed for Tunisia? Most of Lebanon including the refugee camps were now under Israeli control – unguarded and defenseless.
PLO ships leaving port of Beirut Photo:Ahmad Barclay & Hana Sleiman
That’s when it happened. Pro-Israeli forces stormed Shatila and slaughtered 2,000 Palestinians in what Robert Fisk called “the forgotten massacre”. Norwegian journalist Odd Karsten Tveit was among the first to enter the camp. Armed with only a tape recorder, his sound-only report was to become historic.
The photographs taken by other journalists afterwards show what Tveit described with words – countless dead bodies, Palestinian refugees, slaughtered without mercy. In some places the bodies lay in piles, where people had been mowed down in cold blood. Men, women and children – whole families were wiped out. The guilty were never punished.
The Slaughter in Shatila Photo: Robin Moyer
Our delegation and Norwegian People’s Aid visited the memorial to the victims along with Ahed. It took quite some time to get through the camp. We stopped continually along the way for a chat – he knows people here and they know him. It brought back personal memories of walking through Ballymurphy in Belfast with Fr Des Wilson and Gerry Adams in the 1990s.
Palestinians in Lebanon are struggling to survive. Although born and raised in the country, they have few rights. They have no vote, no right to own property and no right to citizenship. They are subject to open discrimination especially in the labor market where they are banned from many professions. Nor are they entitled to use public schools and health services.
The conditions in the camps are appalling. People we met asked the delegation to tell the world about what we saw. UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, led by Irish woman Gwyn Lewis, is in serious crisis due to lack of funding – something which has been well documented for a number of years. The Palestinians are the world’s forgotten refugees.
Visiting Shatila: people have a quiet and determined dignity Photo: Fagforbundet
And European nations have a particular responsibility here – our five largest pension funds have €7.5 billion invested in companies with business activities in and around illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Something which is in total contradiction of United Nations guidelines and totally undermines Palestinian human rights and a potential end to the occupation.
People in the refugee camps in Lebanon are suffering – high unemployment, lack of facilities, outdated water and sewage systems, poor diet and crushing poverty. Children and young people are a particularly vulnerable group – one of the reasons Ahed and others started the Al Walaa Center in 2015. Their goal is an ambitious one – they are determined to save the next generation of Palestinian youth.
Seventy years after Palestinians were forced to flee their homes, they are still in exile and dependent on international goodwill to survive. The election of Trump in the United States means that positive forces in Israel and Palestine who want to build bridges and create peace are now under even greater pressure.
Ahed Baar – Not charity but rights! |
The message Ahed wanted us to bring home was simple and communicated with quiet and determined dignity:“We do not need charity. We only need the same rights as all other world citizens have. And we need more people in the international community who will stand up for Palestinian rights.
We must work together to safeguard the youth and give them a future they deserve. ” Surely that is a goal the international community should be supporting? |
Great piece Eddie,
It is one of the most shameful episodes that has been all but buried because it involves the United States closest ally Israel.
What America would not like is that the rest of the world to do is treat these people as the victims they are, not what their powerful moguls in the press and media would like us to see them as -terrorists and terrorist sympathisers.
Keep up the good work.
Must confess I am shocked and ashamed, I had assumed that the people of the camps had either returned to Palestine or had been integrated with the indigenous population of the Lebanon.
Surely in terms of common decency people must draw the attention of their politicians to the plight of these poor people.
Dear Eddie Whyte here we are in the north east of Ireland asking people to please try to forgive McGurk’s Bar and Enniskillen and to please come together and your contribution to peace is remember Shatila refugee camp .What i find most amazing about the plight of these poor people in these camps is where has all the money gone. Hundreds upon hundreds of millions donated by the west how is it being spent on these poor people. Its well known Yassar Arafat stole billions from the Palestinian people his wife Suha from a poor family is known to be worth at least hundreds upon hundreds of millions. And these poor people live in crap conditions. Hamas multi millionaire terrorist leaders well groomed gentlemen with thousand dollar suits and living in luxurious accommodation have been asked to leave Quater poor them come home get in a tent with the rest of the poor and maybe things will be changed. (Sources say that if Hamas leaders must leave Qatar they will choose Turkey, where Hamas already has offices, or Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates or Lebanon. More important than the location will be economic aid and the degree the leaders abroad can secure funds and donations for what? for the poor don’t think so. Hamas said this pressure would not detract from its military capabilities, which are supported mainly by Iran.) What the fuck is with the military capabilities and the rockets and machine guns and bombs and fucking tunnels go home take back the hundreds of missing millions and track down the swindled billions and house and educate the children not in how to kill but how to get jobs around the world to help the other poor and why haven’t Iran and Saudi and Quater and all the other very very very rich Muslim countries welcomed these poor people into their midst and built proper towns and cities on their land for them even for just now. Build universities for Christs sake for doctors not bombers i would want the money spent on my children and grandchildren if i was a west bank Muslim not a suicide vest strapped to a sixteen year old retarded child brave fucking men done that scum. F–K the Israels and Hamas and Iran keep your ffing rockets send me building materiel’s and joiners and brickies and sparks and teachers for the poor children. I have no love for Israel but i hate plump well groomed very rich conmen telling me they are just like me when i am living in shite. I vote Sinn Féin and i think its time they told these guys about the living wage and looking after your own AHHH but they don’t get to vote oh well. OK OK Israel is scum okok is that better.Now Eddie Whyte go visit the sleek ones the shieks the princes the kings the leaders who keep it all going i beg you ask them to channel all the money away from the terrorists and feed and educate the children in maths not how to hate and kill think of the towns and hospitals and schools that could have been built with all this wasted and stolen money. I hate fat well groomed conmen. there is a lot of bad stuff happened here and there is more than twenty lifetimes of whataboutery here but i do know that the Israelis are nuked up and going nowhere, so its time for this crap to stop just like we did and start to slowly even very very slowly work towards a really achievable settlement and ditch the not an inch crap from both sides and think of the children. After all if your neighbor has a constitution that states his main aim is to wipe out all Jews living next door it will take men of vision like you Mr Whyte to try to convince the parties to talk instead of stirring up shit.Finished. Oh dear i suppose i will get kicked of now. Oh and dear Mr Whyte lets not start a tit for tat like them because we can both make great use of the internet to whataboutery each other. And i can see both sides and my greatest wish is for both of them to try and forgive each other and start over for sake of the poor and the children. Like we are trying to do.