BEIRUT: The fate of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in destitute camps across Lebanon again hangs in the balance as rival leaders feud over whether to grant the refugees long-denied basic rights.
Parliament is due on Thursday to debate whether to accord Palestinians three rights unrestricted employment, social security and medical care, and ownership of property.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s bloc, in favor of extending these rights to the refugees, is close to an agreement with their Christian Maronite allies, according to parliamentarians.
Christians across the board balked at the issue of property rights as well as arms inside Palestinian camps, which are immune to state control.
Bitterly divided Maronite leaders are for once united — all fear the move would be a slippery slope to permanent resettlement and giving the refugees full-fledged citizenship, which in turn would tilt Lebanon’s delicate sectarian balance drastically in favour of Muslims.
"We fully support the humanitarian rights of Palestinian refugees, that was never the issue," Maronite MP Ibrahim Kanaan told AFP. "From the onset, the issue was political."
Kanaan is a member of retired general Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, the key Christian ally of Shia party Hezbollah.
Politically inseparable for years, Aoun’s bloc has however diverged in parliament from Hezbollah, which supports expanding the rights of Palestinians.
"When you progressively turn a Palestinian refugee from a person in exile into a resident of the country of exile … it becomes a grey area," Kanaan said.
"Tawteen is not just about identity papers."
The threat of "tawteen," an Arabic term for the naturalization and resettlement of Palestinians, looms large over Christians, a diminishing community which largely depends on Lebanon’s system of "consensual" democracy to preserve its share in power.
The country’s demographic reality is fast changing: studies show 64 percent of the Lebanese population today is Muslim, roughly split between Shias and Sunnis, and 35 percent Christian.
Walid Jumblatt, head of the country’s minority Druze confession, threw his Maronite compatriots into disarray when he submitted a draft "emergency" law last month that would grant refugees those three basic rights.
His proposal received the full support of Muslim legislators from rival coalitions led respectively by Iranian-backed Shia Hezbollah and Sunni Hariri who is backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Amin Gemayel, Hariri’s ally and head of the Maronite Kataeb (Phalange) party, slammed the move as a "veiled attempt" to resettle the refugees.
Gemayel’s archrival Aoun echoed his stance, saying Saturday: "No one is going to give (Palestinian factions) Lebanon."
And while Maronite leaders and the church have publicly said they support improving the "humanitarian situation," they also demand the state have a say in the thorny issue of arms inside the 12 Palestinian camps.
Armed Palestinians played a major role in the outbreak of the 1975-1990 civil war, which initially pitted Palestinians and leftists on one side against rightwing Christians on the other.
In the absence of a viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, international organizations warn the dangerous mix of oppression, poverty and state neglect has created fertile grounds for extremists in Lebanon’s camps.
The Lebanese army does not enter the camps by longstanding convention, leaving security there in the hands of heavily armed Palestinian factions.
Palestinian leaders for their part have kept a low profile in the current rights debate.
"The core disagreement is among the Lebanese, and not between the Lebanese and Palestinians," said Suheil Natour, a human rights activist and member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
"The Palestinian issue is just being used as a political pawn," Natour told AFP. "There is no way Palestinians will be permanently resettled unless they are granted Lebanese nationality … It is safe to say we agree with the Lebanese on their categorical refusal of naturalization."
Lebanon, a country of four million inhabitants, today is home to between 250,000 and 500,000 refugees, according to varying estimates.
The cash-strapped UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has urged Lebanon to help improve Palestinians’ living conditions, but Maronites say UNRWA is simply trying to shift financial responsibility for the refugees on to Lebanon.
"All the donor countries around the world cannot provide for Palestinian refugees, and yet Lebanon, a tiny country drowning in debt, alone is expected to provide for them," Kanaan said. "It’s tragicomic.
"The Lebanese youth cannot afford apartments in their own country and are emigrating to find employment," he added. "Our government is $550 million short in its social security funds.
"We have to think of Lebanon first."
