Bob Jones, Campaigns and Research Officer at MAP: On a visit to the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el Bared, North Lebanon, last week, I visited a Palestinian family who had fled the conflict in Yarmouk camp, Syria, and were expecting their first child. I was one of four members of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) London team visiting our projects in Lebanon. This particular family receives regular visits from MAP’s team of nurses and midwives as part of our Maternal and Child Health programme.
As we entered their one-room home, the expectant mother explained to us that her water had broken just minutes before and she was set to rush off to the hospital with hospital bag and sister-in-law in tow. Imagining this to mean the visit would end, we turned to leave, but noticed that the husband remained seated on a mattress at the side of the room. He told us that, being unable to afford the $200 renewal fee for a three-month visa for either himself or his wife, he could not leave the camp to witness the birth of his first child. In going to the hospital at all his wife was taking a risk, gambling that the soldiers were less likely to check the permission papers of a woman rushing to hospital than they would a man.
Palestinians in Lebanon, whether newly arrived or having been in the country for many years, face discrimination and frustration on a daily basis. Palestinians cannot obtain work permits for many jobs, struggle to access medical care for complex illnesses and cannot change the reality within which they are trapped - unable to return to their ancestral homeland, but denied many rights in the country of their refuge.
For Palestinians who have fled the unthinkable violence of Syria, experiencing multiple-displacement into camps and gatherings in Lebanon, these issues are compounded by the sufferings and injuries of war. If they cannot pay the visa renewal fee they are forced into a legal limbo, effectively trapped in the camps, where they face even more limited access to healthcare (especially in relation to injuries sustained in conflict), exploitation by unscrupulous employers, and little hope for the future unless something beyond their control changes drastically.
One man we met in a gathering in South Lebanon had fled Yarmouk with his mother, both of them having been shot by snipers. His mother had undergone a hip replacement four months earlier to mend the damage caused by the bullet and had thankfully fully recovered, but her son had been shot through the chest and the bullet still remained lodged in his shoulder. He beckoned us to feel the lump of the bullet in his back, a daily reminder of the barriers facing Palestinians fleeing Syria, safe from the conflict, but unable to access the services needed to heal or progress with their lives. Life in the camps for these families is a daily struggle to deal with the past and try and build a life for the future, but to leave the camps and be caught without a valid visa could, ultimately, risk being returned to Syria.
MAP and our local partners are in the camps every day across Lebanon providing access to healthcare, help to parents seeking to support their children in an ever-uncertain environment, and psycho-social support to children who have experienced situations that many of us will never understand. This is vital work, and every personal story our projects encounter highlights so many larger factors which stand between Palestinians and the full realisation of their rights and freedoms. As an organisation working for the health and dignity of Palestinians we are always seeking to do more to meet immediate health needs, but we also advocate for changes in the laws and structures which hamper these goals.