Finally, a parliamentary debate in Lebanon over the human rights of Palestinian refugees.
What is unfortunate though, is that granting basic civil rights to over 400,000 Palestinians — 62 years after their expulsion from their historic homeland and the issuing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — has been a topic of “debate” in the first place. Equally regrettable is the fact that various “Christian” Lebanese political forces are fiercely opposing granting Palestinians their rights.
Most Palestinians in Lebanon are second- and third-generation refugees. Impoverished camps are the only homes they have ever known. In Palestine, their real home, their villages were destroyed, their fields were burned down and their culture was eradicated. An ongoing attempt at erasing every aspect of the Palestinians’ Arab identity in today’s Israel continues unabated, strengthened by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is recognized in many political circles as “fascist”.
But what 62 years of dispossession, massacres and untold hardship failed to destroy — the memory and the belonging — will certainly not be eliminated now by some right-wing politicians and a few parliamentary bills at the Israeli Knesset, including one that forbids Palestinians from commemorating their Nakba (Catastrophe of 1947-48).
The ongoing debate in the Lebanese Parliament, however, is of a different nature. Lebanon is striving to settle many hanging political questions. Despite Israel’s devastating wars, a more confident Lebanese populace is emerging. This was largely empowered by the success of the Lebanese military resistance to Israel. A country of law and order is replacing that of chaos and turmoil, and a level of political independence is making some promising appearances after decades of total political dependency and proxy civil wars.
However, there are those who want Lebanon to remain a country divided on sectarian lines, a characteristic that defined Lebanese society for generations. Only such a division could guarantee their survival at the helm of dismal clan-based, sectarian hierarchy that has long degraded the image of the country, and allowed outsiders, notwithstanding Israel, to manipulate the fragile structure for their own benefit.
