In November 2003 Ahmed Abdel Majeed, a stateless Palestinian born and raised in Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon, was deported from Canada. The distance between Montreal and Lebanon stretches thousands of kilometers over oceans and continents, but is only a short distance in Ahmed’s eyes and living memory of an existence shaped by the daily struggle of statelessness.

Today Ahmed resides in Ein el-Hilweh, with an estimated 80 000 other stateless Palestinians in the country’s largest refugee camp located on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese city of Saida.

Written for the Electronic Intifada in Beirut Lebanon July 2005

In November 2003 Ahmed Abdel Majeed, a stateless Palestinian born and raised in Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon, was deported from Canada. The distance between Montreal and Lebanon stretches thousands of kilometers over oceans and continents, but is only a short distance in Ahmed’s eyes and living memory of an existence shaped by the daily struggle of statelessness.

Today Ahmed resides in Ein el-Hilweh, with an estimated 80 000 other stateless Palestinians in the country’s largest refugee camp located on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese city of Saida. Ein el-Hilweh is a stark example of the lived reality of persecution that Palestinian refugees face today in Lebanon.

Ein el-Hilweh is a Palestinian ghetto, a social and economic prison for tens of thousands of refugees displaced by the creation of the state of Israel. The entire camp and its thousands of residents are restricted to approximately 2 square kilometers and completely surrounded by Lebanese military check-points, which deny Palestinians freedom of movement. To enter or exit the camp Palestinians are forced to show their U.N. issued refugee identity documents to Lebanese soldiers, enforcing a physical and physiological control over Palestinian movement.

Military control over Palestinians in Ein el-Hilweh symbolizes broader social and economic oppression, enforced by laws and regulations of the Lebanese state, which undermines the basic survival of Palestinians. Forbidden from owning property, working in over 70 professions and legally defined as foreigners, Palestinians live in Lebanon as second-class citizens without any basic social or political rights.

In 2003 Amnesty International conducted a report on the condition of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, which concluded that, “discrimination levied against Palestinians in relation to the rights to own and inherit property and the right to work, creates conditions where Palestinians refugees cannot enjoy an adequate standard of living.