THE TWO-MAN team of the Cyprus delegation of the Doctors of the World (MDM) have delivered 15 pallets of clothing to Ain el-Hilweh Camp, the largest refugee camp in Lebanon that houses over 70,000 Palestinian refugees as well as a number of displaced Lebanese who arrived after the onset of the Israeli strikes over a month ago.
Israel struck the Palestinian refugee camp on Monday morning, less than two hours before the ceasefire. The offensive killed one sanitation worker and injured five others, according to hospital officials.
Secretary of the MDM Board Matheos Demetriades and member Stefanos Kouratzis arrived at the Beirut port on the Princessa Marissa on Sunday, the heaviest but final day of bombardments in Beirut.
After donating six pallets of men’s, women’s and children’s clothing to displaced people in the mountains, the team then headed south for the Ain el-Hilweh (‘beautiful eyes’) camp in Sidon.
The trip to Sidon, normally a 40-minute drive, took three hours along winding mountain roads. The roundabout path was an attempt to avoid the standstill traffic congestion heading south from Beirut, although despite the remote route and the fact that fewer bridges had been bombed on the mountain roads, the traffic was still heavy.
Foam mattresses were tied down on the rooftops of cars and trucks, which were packed with the belongings of displaced Lebanese seeking to return to their homes, or to what was left of them. Dozens of cars were left stranded on the curbside from overheated engines or from lack of petrol – a scant wartime commodity – in the often bumper-to-bumper journey.
Despite securing government authorisation, the MDM delegation was almost denied entry to the refugee camp by soldiers guarding the camp’s eastern entrance. It was only after a 10-minute heated exchange between the escorts of the MDM team and the soldiers that access was granted. The Lebanese army does not enter the camp.
The camp faced food shortages during the early stages of the war but had received supplies in recent days.
Demetriades and Kouratzis first visited a school that had been converted into a temporary shelter for the displaced Lebanese. Month-old friends hugged and wept before being bussed out of the camp to return to their southern homes, promising one another that their friendships – which had been forged under wartime duress – would not end with their separation.
Khaled Al-Hasan, 37, and his family abandoned their village 20 days ago. “We will never leave our land,” he said. “In peace or in war, we will go back.”
“We want from the UN to not only give us schools and feed us but to oblige Israel to respect international law and not only implement this recent [Security Council Resolution] decision 1701 but also all other decisions before it,” Al-Hasan said.
Displaced Lebanese told grim stories of friends or relatives killed in the bombing. But at the same time many of them were not free of misconceptions about Hizbollah strikes. “Not one civilian was killed by the Hizbollah attacks,” one woman cried. “Only the military!”
Demetriades and Kouratzis then visited the Saed Sayel Community Health Centre, a primary care centre in the refugee camp.
Those with serious health problems or injuries are transported to the Al-Hamshary Hospital of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, located just outside the camp.
The duo also toured the hospital and requested of the Board of Directors a list of needed medical supplies and equipment. The hospital has been running on a generator since Israel struck the electricity plant in Sidon.
The Cyprus delegation of MDM intends to establish a long-term mission in Lebanon that could offer round-the-clock aid to centres in the south like Al-Hamshary Hospital.
“With the exception of a very few shortages, the infrastructure exists here [in the hospital] which means our surgeon volunteers could begin work right away,” Demetriades said.
The strike on Sidon
THOSE WOUNDED in the two separate incidents of Israeli strikes on the Palestinian refugee camp were taken to the Al-Hamshary Hospital. The latest offensive came at 6:30 am on Monday, an hour-and-a-half shy of the ceasefire.
Lebanese and Palestinian officials said that a warship shelled the Ain el-Hilweh camp, while the Israeli military said that it was an aerial targeting of a house used by Hizbollah guerrillas.
The blast killed a sanitation worker and wounded five others. The explosion of debris crushed any cars parked in the area and surrounding houses were pockmarked with shrapnel.
On Tuesday the neighbourhood residents were busy shovelling debris off their rooftops and clearing paths to their front doors amidst the rubble, careful to avoid setting off any unexploded ordinances.
One woman’s house neighbouring the parking lot where the bomb struck looked like it might collapse at any moment. Her infant lay smiling in a baby stroller amidst the wreckage.
Hospital staff said that the bomb was a penetration ‘smart bomb’. Based on the depth of the crater created by the blast and the extensive surrounding damages, it was surprising more people had not been killed.
The Coordinator for Volunteers and Youth in Ain el-Hilweh, Nesrine Abdallah, told the Cyprus Mail that more people would have been killed had the strike taken place later on in the morning.
“People were still sleeping or in their houses at that time. It would have been much worse later on, because people would have been walking around.”
Camp aid workers complain that the sardine-like congestion within the camp is due to the fact that the government has not permitted it to expand. The camp now holds 50,000 more people within the same area than it did in 1950, when it housed 20,000.
“There are people who are born in Ain el-Hilweh and die in Ain el-Hilweh,” Abdallah said.
A Palestinian Red Crescent Society doctor said that Lebanese people often have mixed feelings about Palestinians in Lebanon.
“Both groups have suffered incursions and occupation by the Israeli military but some Lebanese blame Palestinians for bringing their problems with them when they arrived as refugees during the 1948 war,” he said. “But they were refugees. It was not a choice.”
“Dignity and freedom, that is all we want. One cannot live without either.”
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