Lebanon’s Palestinian ghetto redesigned

Le Monde Diplomatique-How to secure the organic architecture of exile
Lebanon proposes to rebuild Nahr al-Bared, the Palestinian city-camp near Tripoli pulverised in a long siege last year in an attempt to kill Sunni militants holed up there. The new, as yet only imagined, town is intended to preserve the memories of the old, yet return the area to the control of Lebanon.

By Don Duncan

Some time before 2007 Fatah al-Islam, an extremist Sunni group tied to al-Qaida, made up of fighters from all over the Middle East, began to hole itself up in Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp outside the northern Lebanon city of Tripoli. After incidents with security forces in Tripoli, the group attacked an army outpost near the camp, killing 27 men on 20 May 2007. The Lebanese state then shelled the camp for three months, reducing it to rubble, and killed the militants. After the shelling stopped in September, the smoke cleared to reveal a camp and people once relegated to the periphery of the Lebanese political stage, suddenly at the centre of the country’s struggle to regain hold of its national security.

As reported by Fidaa Itani (1), the Nahr al-Bared conflict made it clear that Lebanon was vulnerable to extremist militant cells and that its army was too weak to handle such a threat. It was also proof of significant al-Qaida activity in Lebanon, a key US ally in the Middle East.

Nahr al-Bared was 600 densely packed acres by the Mediterranean coast, a few kilometres north of Tripoli. A conglomeration of buildings, people and businesses, it dominated the area and supplied Lebanese villages in the surrounding hills. In the 1950s and 1960s, Palestinian merchants packed their wares on donkeys and sold them up in the villages around. They drew the villagers down to the camp, which became economically and socially integrated, unlike the 11 other Palestinian camps. It was a Palestinian city, but in Lebanon.

Now the camp lies silent and in rubble. Its residents, displaced to other camps, see a chaos of shattered history, a puzzle they are eager to return to and solve. The government sees an opportunity to gain some control of the Palestinians (who may be about 10% of the population) and of their camps, considered dangerous, lawless and a liability.

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