Exodus from Nahr al-Bared soaks up resources at Beddawi camp
'People are sleeping all together on the floors in the dust'
By Nichole Sobecki
Special to The Daily Star
Friday, May 25, 2007
BEDDAWI, NORTH LEBANON: Relief agencies scrambled on Thursday to meet the needs the more than 15,000 Palestinian refugees who have fled fighting in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp for nearby Beddawi, aid organizations and hospital officials said Thursday.
The approximately 35,000 residents of Nahr al-Bared were trapped inside the camp without running water or electricity and with dwindling food supplies for three days after clashes erupted between Fatah al-Islam militants and the Lebanese Army early Sunday.
Fighting at Nahr al-Bared resumed late Thursday.
The first residents left the camp under a shaky cease-fire on Tuesday afternoon.
Many of the refugees are being housed in one of three schools in Beddawi, situated 15 kilometers from Nahr al-Bared. Each school hosts an estimated 1,500 people, according to relief agencies. The rest of the refugees are staying with families in the camp, sometimes 40 people to a room.
"Beddawi is miserable; people are sleeping all together on the floors in the dust," said Dr. Ayed Abou Hussein, a resident of Nahr al-Bared who arrived in Beddawi on Wednesday.
"There are many people who left their houses without being able to take their money with them. They are completely reliant on others."
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Lebanese Red Cross, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the UN Relief and Works Agency are coordinating efforts to provide humanitarian assistance, including more than 2,000 mattresses and basic food supplies, to people in both camps.
The ICRC also sent a convoy of humanitarian assistance to Lebanon through its delegation in Jordan Thursday. The convoy consisted of 11 truckloads containing over 220 tons of food, the group said.
Medical supplies and an additional medical team have been dispatched to Safad Hospital in Beddawi. Officials at the hospital said the facility was under tremendous stress due to the large influx of refugees suffering wounds and ailments from the continued fighting at Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.
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The hospital has been forced to operate on a double shift to accommodate the 216 people who have come in the past three days, according to hospital director Ahmed al-Hajj.
Hajj said the hospital had admitted 103 wounded from the fighting. Other patients were suffering from shock, dehydration, low blood sugar and hunger.
"Although the International Red Cross, the Lebanese Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society have provided many things it is not enough to meet the needs of such a war," said Hajj.
"We are not responsible for this conflict and why should the Palestinians pay for it?"
Sitting in one of the hospital's many full rooms, Rehan Khoadr, 20, was recovering from shrapnel wounds to her abdomen, chest and legs. A thin woman, she appeared drawn but gestured animatedly despite an intravenous needle inserted into her arm.
"When the war started we became scared and tried to flee the camps," she said. "As we were getting ready to leave a bomb fell on our house. That is all I remember. Now I know my father is dead and my mother is in a coma."
In another room of the hospital, a family crowded around Youssef Abu Radi, 12, his sister spoon-feeding him water. Radi was unable to walk after being hit by shrapnel when a civilian bus fleeing Nahr al-Bared came under fire on Wednesday afternoon, his father said.
A nurse massaging Radi's legs to maintain blood circulation revealed after she left the room that doctors were unsure if he would ever walk again.
Radi's mother was killed during the family's exodus from Nahr al-Bared when the bus came under fire less than 60 meters from a checkpoint outside the camp, the father said.
"It is a crime that we have to pay the bill of political conflicts," said Hussein.
25 Mayo 2007
The end of Sharon's path 
By Akiva Eldar
Tzipi Livni complained to foreign diplomats last week that Israel left the Gaza Strip and dismantled all the settlements in Gush Katif, but that the Palestinians are reciprocating with salvos of Qassams. Really, that is not the proper way to behave. What, Livni and the apple of her eye, Ariel Sharon, were unaware that Hamas terrorists do not behave nicely? They thought Khaled Meshal and Mahmoud a-Zahar would send them flowers? It is hard to decide which is worse - that they failed to take into account the possibility that disengagement without an agreement with the Palestinians would increase the threat against the communities in the southwestern Negev, similar to what happened after Israel withdrew from Lebanon without an agreement with Syria; or that they left the Gaza Strip knowing full well that it would fall like a ripe fruit into the hands of Hamas.
The foreign minister provided the answer herself not long ago. In an interview on U.S. television, she admitted that it would have been better to leave Gaza as part of an agreement rather than to "toss the key into the street." The "street" is Hamas, of course, whose leading slogan is "resistance defeated the agreements." Ehud Olmert's best course of action since entering Sharon's shoes was violating his own great election promise to "follow in Sharon's path." There is no sign of convergence, and no vestige of unilateralism. The "no partner" mantra has given way to courting "moderate Arab leaders" and to longings for the "peace process."
Withstanding the pressure to reconquer the Gaza Strip also shows that Olmert is not following Sharon's path with eyes closed. So far, he has refrained from ordering a Gaza replay of Operation Defensive Shield, which brought the Israel Defense Forces back into the West Bank. And perhaps he learned the lesson of the Second Lebanon War - that a massive attack against Arab civilians unifies the Muslim world against the Israeli enemy and its "partners" in the pragmatic Arab camp.
Like always, this serves the radical stream in Hamas, which dislikes the partnership between Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, seeks to undermine the Dayton plan to strengthen Fatah, and objects to the Arab peace initiative. The way to rehabilitate what Sharon left of the partner is, therefore, precise and cautious use of power against Hamas, retrieving the key from the street and delivering it to the right address. This could be done by responding affirmatively to Abbas' request to extend the calm (tahadiyeh) to the West Bank and by ordering the IDF to attack only "ticking bombs," with discrete cooperation with the Palestinian Authority's security apparatuses. As far as we know, there are no tunnels under the Jordan River that could be used to smuggle weapons into the West Bank during a cease-fire. And why shouldn't the government apply the Dayton program to ease conditions throughout all the territories, showing the residents that only the moderate camp can restore their hopes?
Granting the Palestinian partner these small and important measures is essential, but this will maintain the status quo temporarily at best. To embark on a new path, Israel must take a big step forward, along the route charted by the Arab League's peace initiative. Opening a channel to Damascus, whether secret or explicit, via which Israel would assure Syria that an accord on the Golan would not lag behind an agreement on the Palestinian territories, would not just calm the northern front; Khaled Meshal's host could also exert more long-term influence on the southern front than a few Israeli air attacks on Gaza weapons laboratories would.
Hamas' violent clashes with Fatah in the streets of Gaza are nothing more than a dress rehearsal for the great confrontation the group anticipates in June and July. The attempt to blend a religious movement (whose ideology does not allow it to recognize a Jewish state) and a secular national movement (which has internalized the limits of its power) did not succeed. Sooner or later, whether through gun slits or the slits of ballot boxes, the Palestinians will receive another opportunity to choose which path they prefer. The Israelis will, too.
25 Mayo 2007
