Palestinians from Nahr al Bared camp, Lebanon

(BADDAWI CAMP, North Lebanon) --- You enter a geographic and cultural portal when you drive in to the Baddawi Palestinian refugee camp 5 kilometers from the northern coastal city of Tripoli.

Posters of slain Hamas leaders, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi are paired next to posters of Yassar Arafat, signs of political and spiritual allegiance that could be on walls from Nablus or Ramallah.

But this is not Palestine, it is Lebanon, and in the last week, Baddawi's residents have seen their dense, poverty-ridden urban setting stretched to its social capacity -- the result of what sources on the ground say are more than 15,000 plus refugees from the Nahr al Bared camp that have streamed into Baddawi.

Over the last 9 days, the Lebanese security forces have been fighting a well-armed Sunni Islamist group, Fatah al Islam, which had taken up residence in the Nahr al Bared camp after last summer's war with Israel.

As has been reported, more than 30,000 Palestinians of Nahr al Bared have been caught in the crossfire, with 18 casualties confirmed and an untold number of injured.

By all accounts, these casualties have been a result of the Lebanese Army's relentless shelling into the center of the Nahr al Bared camp. Cell phone footage from some of Nahr al Bared's residents are testimony to this gruesome reality -- the martyrs lie next to the injured in the camp's only clinic, a clinic unequipped to handle anything but basic triage. Medical supplies there are non-existent. Neither Fatah al Islam or the Lebanese Army is letting in any aid.

All those who have managed to make their way out of the Nahr al Bared camp tell of the ordeal: Sniper fire rumored to be coming from Sunni militiamen from a nearby town who have dug in to positions around the camp. Shrapnel from Lebanese mortar and tank shells. Fatah al Islam snipers. Beatings by Lebanese security detachments questioning the Palestinians leaving the camp.

Manal is a sixteen year old girl that left with her family last Thursday as a fierce battle was raging. After arriving in the Baddawi camp, she spent 24 hours doubled over in pain. When the pain became unbearable, she and her mother made their way to the Saffad Hospital in Baddawi. Only after medical attention did she discover the hunk of twisted metal about the size of large coin lodged in her mid-section.

As she recovered in the hospital, her mother held the shrapnel up for a parade of journalists and aid workers.

Her eyes told of a deep attentiveness for her daughter's condition.

What pain must she have endured? There is no time to deal with the future. Their homes in Nahr al Bared are a long way off at the moment.

Even those attempting to get aid in to and out of the camp were not spared the expense of the internecine violence. A United Nations Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA] convoy was attacked last week when attempting to bring aid in the camp - causing at least one death. In Baddawi, one member of the Red Crescent was shot in the neck by a sniper while evacuating other wounded from the camp.

Meanwhile, for the Palestinians in Baddawi, this new influx of refugees has doubled the population of the camp, and the social service sector within the camp has been stretched to the maximum – medical assistance, food, water and other aid is slow in coming.

However, surprising things have been happening with the convergence of two distinct Palestinian refugee populations.

As the Baddawi camp has had to accommodate the civilians fleeing Nahr al Bared, many people in the Baddawi camp who previously spoke of differences through some disposition of camp loyalty or territorial assertion, now speak of animosity melting away.

According to one young member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Alaa, a college student at the Lebanese University: "Baddawi residents are in solidarity with the Nahr al Bared refugees. They were resentful at first. But no more."

The situation with Fatah al Islam has thus served to strengthen the bond between Palestinians already on the shoe end of the social hierarchy of Lebanon. Political factions have had to cooperate in areas of security and aid distribution, forming committees to provide every aspect of what is an ad hoc social safety net.

The Committee for the Festival of Right of Return (a grouping of 23 civil society organizations) estimates that of the thousands of refugees who have arrived in Baddawi, only 20% are located in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency schools, set up as official distribution points for the destitute. At least 75% of the refugees from Nahr al Bared are staying in the homes of Baddawi residents.

The irony is that the "official" aid distribution processes are set up to serve those people staying in the schools and clinics. Some 80% of the aid is going to this demographic and not to the majority in the private housing. And it is obvious that even for those receiving assistance in the "official" UNRWA schools, patience is running thin.

Walking through the streets of the Baddawi camp this past week, dodging the cars on narrow congested streets, peering into the small hot classrooms crammed several families deep, adaptive and resilient, the Palestinians who have made their way here, both because of the recent fighting in and around Nahr al Bared, and those who fled Palestine in 1948 during what they call Nakba, have learned to make the most of little.

Nearly 60 years of transience does that.

Families spread out on thin foam cushion mattresses, staying away from the heat on cold concrete floors, eating the food provided by charity foundations from Gulf Arab states - ready to eat meals of rice, yogurt, and pita.

Are these meals baksheesh for some future poker game? "Look, we helped you in your time of need. You should remember that."

Then there’s the Lebanese Army. They have lost at least 30 men, some of the dead apparently from friendly fire. But, the Palestinian youth from Nahr al Bared who have fled their homes don't have any knowledge of the suffering of the parents of the Lebanese Army dead. They see their own family members dead and wounded, their homes and holy sites destroyed. Their impression of the Army is equated to the suffering of their community – very little sympathy is quartered.

One youth being housed at Baddawi's UNWRA sponsored school drew his impressions of the battle raging in and around Nahr al Bared. His was an image of a dove descending straight into the ground that is positioned on a blackboard next to another child's clear depiction of a Lebanese tank - a strange juxtaposition of images that encapsulated the confusion that also exists among the newly displaced youth.

Who do they blame for their suffering? Will there be peace?

The United States and it's Arab allies, like Jordan, are sending other aid in the form of military assistance to the Lebanese Military, to wipe out Fatah al Islam - a group which represents a clear threat to Lebanon's fragile political system.

Questions I ask as this conflict rages on: Will the Lebanese Army's reputation as the last functioning multi-sect institution remain intact when the situation is resolved? Will the Palestinians accept the outcome, whatever it is? Will this battle between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al Islam strengthen the perceptions of the government after it's weak performance against Israel in last summer's war? Questions that will resonate for months and years to come?

In the end, the voices that are most prevalent in the Baddawi camp are those of the children. Hundreds of children displaced from the Nahr al Bared camp are gathered in the schoolyards with children from Baddawi.

Asserting their “right to play” they are experiencing a displacement that their parents and grandparents are analogizing to the great displacement in 1948.

Although the children play to ease their minds, their parents speak of the big question: when will they go home? Some aid workers said that the parents were distressed that the children should be having so much fun when the situation was so dire.

Tanya Traboulsi is a freelance photographer based in Beirut, Lebanon.
You can find her work online at www.lightstalkers.org/tanya_traboulsi

Jackson Allers is a Middle East correspondent for Inter Press Service, Free Speech Radio News and has produced for Al Jazeera International's "People and Power." He is based in Beirut, Lebanon.

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