Ahmadinejad Galvanizes Lebanon's Palestinians

Young Palestinians are still abuzz with excited discussions of his visit.

President Ahmadinejad in Lebanon. Photo: EuroNews.net

(SHATILA CAMP, BEIRUT, Lebanon) - “The only solution to the Palestinian issue is for the invaders (Israelis) of the occupied Palestinian land to leave, and give the Palestinians their rights and return all the Palestinian refugees to their original land. Iran supports Lebanon’s bitter struggle in confronting Israeli assaults. We demand with all seriousness and insistence the liberation of all occupied land in Lebanon and Syria”.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bint Jbeil 10/15/10

In the days since Iran’s president Ahmadinejad completed his visit to Lebanon, and given the continuing lively discussion across the local and international political spectrum evaluating the impact of his historic appearance, one thing appears fairly clear. US State Department official Jeffrey Feltman who came to Beirut quick from Saudi Arabia on orders from the White House to “do something!” to offset the Iranians unprecedented  reception, may have been a bit wide of  the mark in his evaluation. Feltman repeated this past weekend the March 14 pro-US and Saudi prediction that: “ I don’t think Ahmadinejad’s” visit will have a lasting effect.  It’s not something extraordinary. Its impact will remain for a couple days and that’s it.”

One  largely unnoticed achievement of the Iranian President’s visit remains among the Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon.  Close to a quarter million of whom are “ living in cages” to  borrow  President Carter’s description during his meeting this week with Hamas leader Khaled Mashall in Damascus,  to describe how their sisters and brothers are forced to exist in Gaza.

 Apart from the Shia community, the largest number of the approximately 750,000 who, waited at various events to greet and hear Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were Palestinian refugees. It is the Lebanese Shia, living in south Lebanon, the Bekaa  and in Dahiyeh, who are the primary beneficiaries  of the more than one billion dollars in recent  reconstruction aid from Iran.

This  infusion of funding contributed to Hezbollah’s  increase in political power and its ability to achieve public services in its neighborhoods which were previously ignored by the state.  The massive rebuilding projects created  pockets of thieving construction economies, mainly in the Hezbollah areas of Ghouberi Municipality, Bir Abed and Haret Hreik, near the  Palestinian refugee camps of Burj al Barajeneh, Mar Elias and Shatila. This area saw, since the 2006 war, the rebuilding of 235 multi unit apartment buildings (80% completed as of 10/19/10 in probably the most efficient building project of its kind in history according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The Iranian largess has quietly benefited thousands  of Palestinians in these areas even though they are forbidden by law to travel to south Lebanon to visit or work and must remain north of the Litani river on penalty of arrest and imprisonment.

During a 10/18/10 morning tour of nearly completed Waad (promise) residential buildings, bombed into smoldering mountains of rubble during the 2006 war,  this observer interviewed several Palestinian laborers and craftsmen working side by side with equally skilled and hard working Syrian workers.  What was learned is what Hezbollah officials have revealed, regarding Waad (Promise) and Jihad al Bina (struggle construction company) both now firmly on US Terrorism lists solely for political reasons.  Both organizations have discretely hired, in addition to laborers, hundreds of Palestinian engineers, craftsmen,  architects, and “syndicate professionals.”  These job offerings go to Palestinian refugees despite being forbidden to them by Lebanese laws enacted by a government that does not even pretend to comply with internationally mandated civil rights for refugees.

Nearly a week now since Ahmadinejad's departure, the 12 Palestinian camps and two ‘gatherings’, especially among the young people, are still abuzz with often excited discussions of his visit.

This reaction, despite much that is being erroneously reported these days about the current “lost” generation of Palestinians in Lebanon resulting, so it is said, from the devastation that beset this community following the August 1982 departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization. These are legitimate concerns with sociological studies on the subject often presenting shocking indices of social decline, ennui, passivity, and hopelessness.  It is well known that Lebanon’s  camps have deteriorated  and  that the quality of life continues to disintegrate. But the young people still appear resolved to follow the spirit of their elders who founded the Palestinian Liberation Organization.  Discussions among many in the camps here inevitably turn to questions of “what went wrong?” and “how can we fulfill our parents dreams and take up the mantle of Liberation and Return that we heard from our elders”, “how  can we unite Hamas and Fatah”,  and “how to confront the expanding apartheid regime in Palestine”?

What President Ahmadinejad brought to the under 30 generation in the Palestinian camps is more hope, energy and self confidence.

Lacking unified  leadership of their own, many Palestinians  in Lebanon have been looking to Hezbollah and Iran as a model to revive the Palestinian liberation movement.  The veteran American journalist Jonathan Randel, in Lebanon this week finishing a book on Palestinians in Lebanon suggests that Hezbollah’s 1985 removal of Israeli occupation forces from one-third of Lebanon’s southern villages was likely one of the factors that  gave those under occupation in Palestine confidence  to achieve the first intifada,1987-93.

 Iran’s President easily connects with young people and is unquestionably committed to the full right of refugees return to their country.  In a side meeting with representatives of the refugees camps community and some of their allies, Iran’s President could not have been more emphatic and clear about this.  Included in his counsel to young Palestinians during his visit were the following:

• “Stay in school and help care for all members of your family.  It is you who will join the villagers of south Lebanon and liberate Palestine.  People like you make revolutions”;
• Do not become discouraged by what might appear to be a bleak period in occupied Palestine and in Lebanon’s camps.  Ignore those who say the Palestinian revolution belongs to the past.
• Palestine will be liberated.  It is a scientific certainly that this criminal occupation will end and  that all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will be able to go back to their ancestral lands
• The splintering of the  Palestinian body politic has been caused largely from external forces but increasingly with internal dimensions that must be resisted;
• It is the duty of the international community to help you secure basic rights in Lebanon until your certain return to Palestine. Iran is prepared to fulfill its duty in this regard;

·         “Lebanon is the focus point of  the resistance and standing against occupiers and oppressors and is playing an excellent role";

·         “Your return to Palestine may happen sooner than you think and is only a matter of time and perhaps the coming war will achieve this”;

Mohammad, a young Palestinian  dentist allowed only to practice inside Shatila Camp due to Lebanon’s discriminatory labor laws explained:  “President Ahmadinejad has been a hero to many of us here in the camps since he first became President of Iran.  Unlike most Arab leaders, he is committed to  the liberation of Palestine as if he were himself a Palestinian. He encourages us and speaks like our leaders used to speak before they seem to have given up our national struggle.  In fact, he is more Palestinian than many Palestinians I know. We trust him and feel we have someone to support and protect us. Like  Hassan Nassrallah  he has bolstered our confidence to struggle to return to Palestine. Both of these great men are like uncles to the  Palestinian generation now becoming adults. Published originally in bitterlemons-international.org

Dr. Franklin Lamb is Director of the Sabra Shatila Foundation. Contact him at: fplamb@sabrashatila.org. He is working with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign in Lebanon on drafting legislation which, after 62 years, would, if adopted by Lebanon’s Cabinet and Parliament grant the right to work and to own a home to Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees. One part of the PCRC legislative project is its online Petition which can be viewed and signed at: petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html. Lamb is reachable at fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org. Franklin Lamb’s book on the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, now out of print, was published in 1983, following Janet’s death and was dedicated to Janet Lee Stevens. He was a witness before the Israeli Kahan Commission Inquiry, held at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in January 1983.