The standoff between the Lebanese army and Islamic militants has focused attention on the 400,000 Palestinian refuges in the country

In Lebanon's dusty, overcrowded Palestinian refugee camps people live in abject poverty, with many families surviving on food rations and handouts from the UN, in what was once temporary housing.

In the teeming streets of Shatilla camp, the scene of a notorious civil war massacre, malnourished children play in little more than rags between crumbling bullet riddled buildings and amidst open sewage.

"We have no rights and no future. We have a lot of problems; We can't work freely, we cannot own a house, we cannot move around. We are treated as if we are not human," said 20-year-old Samar, from Shatilla.
 

The standoff between the Lebanese army and the militant Fatah al-Islam group has focused attention on the position of the 400,000 Palestinians in the country. Whatever happens in the Nahr al-Bared camp, Palestinian leaders hope that the attention attracted by the crisis will lead to a recognition of the grim and hopeless life that many of them have lived for more than half a century.

"There is never any electricity, last year we went nearly six months without electricity, we had to use candles at night and those who could afford to bought electricity from people with generators," said Samar.

She described how every winter the rain floods the camps and open sewage is washed into people's houses. "It's the worst in winter, when the floods come. Sometimes there is a metre of water in the street, you need a car just to cross."

Palestinian refugees first arrived in 1948, mainly in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa valley, when they were greeted sympathetically by a population that thought their stay would be temporary. Since then generations have grown up with little more than a symbolic hope that they would return to a Palestinian homeland.

A fresh wave arrived in the wake of the 1967 war after being deported from the occupied territories. Now, according to the UN relief and works agency (UNRWA) there are around 212,000 refugees in the camps and a further 188,000 outside. Some Palestinians claim that the figure may be lower, while some Lebanese authorities place it higher.

Initially, they lived in tents that were slowly replaced with primitive breeze block structures with zinc roofs. Now conditions in many of the "camps" have deteriorated while their populations have multiplied.

"The borders of the camp are fixed and it is illegal for us to build on the edge of the camp," explains 30-year-old Rabieh from Ain al Hilweh, Lebanon's largest camp. "The areas were very small to begin with but as the population has increased over time, people have been forced to live closer and closer together."

Young men in the camps describe how they are harassed and beaten by the Lebanese security services. "The internal security forces are always aggressive if they know you are Palestinian," said Rabieh. "Sometimes guys are dragged off and beaten just because they have a certain family name."

"They live under permanent pressure and there is despair," said Sybille Bikar, who works on the refugee issue in Lebanon for the European commission. "They feel they live in a very hostile world."

The refugees do not enjoy citizenship and are restricted in the work they can do and where they can live, as they are not entitled to buy property. A government ordinance stretching back to 1982 prohibits them from work in many of the main professions and, as a result, unemployment is high. Many of the women working in service professions and the men in agriculture, while others have left Lebanon in despair to find work outside the region.

"In terms of living conditions, Lebanon is the worst place for Palestinians outside Gaza and the West Bank," said a western diplomat. "They are better off in Syria."

The Lebanese authorities are sensitive to allegations that they treat the Palestinians poorly. They argue that if they granted them citizenship, it would create an imbalance in the country's fragile demography, as they would constitute around 10% of the population and, since they are mainly Sunnis, create further problems in an already delicate religious equation. Some members of the government cling to the belief that, even after nearly three decades, the Palestinians will return south of the border and, if they were to integrate them, they would be finally accepting defeat.

"If it were up to me, I would give them the right to work tomorrow," said Saad Hariri, of the Future Tide party and the son of the assassinated former leader, Rafik Hariri. "But if the Palestinians stay in Lebanon it will change the whole situation demographically." He said that he believed that they would eventually return.

Palestinian spokesmen express frustration. Souheil el-Natour of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said: "Even if we had a state in Gaza where would they go? One day or another we will have to reunite Israel and Palestine in one democratic state."

Such poor conditions and so few opportunities make the camps a fertile breeding ground for militant groups who argue that patience and acceptance have achieved nothing. However, both Palestinian and Lebanese authorities are swift to distance Fatah al-Islam from the Palestinians.

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