Lebanon differs drastically from Jordan and Syria in that its refugees are denied citizenship and face severe restrictions with regard to access to health care, employment, and property ownership (Suleiman 2010).
A final factor that helped lay the ground for UNRWA’s current reform process is an apparent shift in refugee attitudes concerning attempts to drastically change the living conditions or features of their camps (Al-Hamarneh 2002; Misselwitz 2009; Al Husseini 2011, 2010). Indeed, host states have not been alone in opposing drastic changes to the fabric of the camps; the refugees themselves have historically been concerned that the camps maintain an aura of temporariness as a means of asserting refugees’ commitment to the right of return and as a form of resistance to what they see as attempts to resolve the refugee issue through economic rather than political measures. With the failure of the Oslo peace process–a sign that there was no imminent durable solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict–it became more acceptable in refugee circles to broach the idea of comprehensive and long-term improvements (Misselwitz 2009).
This emerging shift among Palestinian refugees cannot be told as the linear story of a progressive change in attitude. This story has been, and continues to be, rife with tensions and contradictions. As noted by Muna Budeiri (2014), compared with outside actors, including UNRWA, Palestinian refugees are mostly responsible for the progressive urbanization and modernization of their camps. Additionally, it is not unusual for Palestinian refugees to criticize what they see as UNRWA’s lack of concern for the harsh living conditions in some camps. For instance, over the course of my fieldwork I routinely heard refugees in Neirab and Ein el Tal, the sites of the Neirab Rehabilitation Project, complain of UNRWA complacency in the face of their hardships. These complaints were occurring at the very same time that UNRWA was facing significant resistance in the camps with regard to implementation of the project.
Indeed, there were two major rumors circulating in both Neirab and Ein el Tal at the time of my fieldwork in 2005: the first argued that the project was a deftly articulated plan by UNRWA and its Western donors to promote the permanent settlement of Palestinians in Syria and to do away with the right of return; the second argued that the real aim of the project, which drew on an understanding of development as self-reliance, was the progressive dismantlement of UNRWA and consequently the disappearance of the Palestinian refugee issue. At the same time that these rumors were making the rounds and jeopardizing UNRWA’s credibility, it became evident that in Ein el Tal, some resistance to the project was (paradoxically) due to anger over what refugees saw as UNRWA’s failure to fulfill previous promises to improve camp conditions.3
The complex and contradictory ways in which Palestinians react to camp improvements bring to light that “many of the things that development promises–whether it is electricity, roads, formal education, and biomedical healthcare or greater prosperity and consumption–are, in fact, highly desired by vast numbers of people in the nominally developing world” (Ferguson 1999; Smith and Johnson-Hanks 2015:436). However, Palestinian refugees’ complicated engagement with the discourse of development must also be read within a specifically Palestinian context. It is my contention that the complex and contradictory ways in which Palestinian refugees view improving camp conditions are indicative of two seemingly opposed currents that, while not necessarily tied to a deliberate plan on the part of a particular actor, have different political implications for the refugees. This is especially the case when it comes to the right of return. I refer to these two seemingly clashing currents as the “politics of suffering” and the “politics of citizenship.”
The Politics of Suffering versus the Politics of Citizenship
The tension between what I call “the politics of suffering” and “the politics of citizenship” is captured by the picture on the book cover. I took the picture in the barracks area of Neirab Camp in October 2010, before the Syrian uprisings started. My guess is that when looking at the picture most people would assume that the partial ruin is a reference to the refugee camp while the apartment building signals a world beyond it. The picture, however, depicts an almost completed modern apartment building standing in a spot previously occupied by a barrack and behind it, a partially destroyed barrack, awaiting transformation into a modern apartment building. The picture gives an insight into the promise of development. It also gives an insight into the implications of a blurring of the distinction between the camp and the city. Once the barracks became slated for destruction, a move that had initially found consensus among all project stakeholders, it became clear to many in Neirab that the destruction of the barracks meant the silencing of an important witness to the suffering they had endured as refugees and, therefore, an important ally in their quest for justice.
Palestinian refugees in Ein el Tal and Neirab usually described their suffering using the term mu‘ānā, a noun that comes from the Arabic root ānā, meaning “to incur,” “to suffer (from),” or “to endure.” It can also mean “to be anxious” or “to be preoccupied” or “to take pain (in doing something).” Refugees usually talked about mu‘ānā to point out the hardships of their everyday lives, often connecting it to the events that resulted in their forced exile: had they not been historically exiled and dispossessed, they would not be facing their current hardships.4 For the refugees of Ein el Tal and Neirab, suffering took on political meanings that were sometimes at odds with formal, state-centered understandings of social equality and progress.
The Neirab Rehabilitation Project aimed to put an end to suffering understood as dilapidated housing and an unhealthy physical environment, overcrowding, low income, lack of employment, and a general lack of socioeconomic opportunities. It did not address suffering as a consequence of political subjugation or injustice. It did not capture suffering as it was expressed to me by Anwar Fanous, a Palestinian official working for the General Authority for Palestinian Arab Refugees (GAPAR), Syria’s government body that oversees the country’s Palestinian population and maintains a strong presence in the camps.5 At the time, Fanous was GAPAR’s representative for the Aleppo area. He was from Neirab Camp, where he lived in the barracks with his wife and four children. According to a high UNRWA official closely involved with the Neirab Rehabilitation Project, Fanous was the one who first brought the harsh living conditions of the barracks to UNRWA’s attention and insisted that something be done about them.
I often saw Fanous, a smallish man with an intense gaze and a severe demeanor, at project meetings, but had never dared to approach him. I was aware that he knew of me because I needed permission from GAPAR to be in the camps of Neirab and Ein el Tal. I waited until a few days before my departure from northern Syria to finally ask him for an interview. To my surprise, he accepted. During the interview, I was struck by a particular moment when this man–who never smiled, never acknowledged my presence at public events, and had the power to banish me from Neirab and Ein el Tal at the slightest faux pas–suddenly tried to convey how he felt knowing that anybody from any part of the world could visit his homeland while he could not. This caused ‘azza ‘alā al-qalb, “sorrow to the heart,” he explained repeatedly as he put his hand on his chest–an expression not only of emotional pain but also of the sense of injustice at not being able to set foot in his homeland.
In addition to expressing their suffering as emotional pain resulting from the injustice of living in forced exile, Palestinian refugees also saw it as a political tool. Suffering took on the form of stoicism, something that needed to be endured to maintain the memory of exile and actualize the narrative of return.6 Stoicism dignified Palestinian suffering understood as part of a larger struggle for liberation and return. Those who earned a camp community’s respect were those who had struggled for Palestinian freedom through their political activism, especially those who had shed blood for the cause. Most were those who lived in humble conditions in the camp, not those who had achieved the dream of modernization, who lived in villas and were economically prosperous, who met the international indicators of well-being that are important to UNRWA. Anthropologist Rosemary Sayigh notes that when Palestinians embraced resistance and armed struggle in Lebanon in the late 1960s, the
