Sitting on an uncomfortable faux leather couch so cracked that the foam stuffing is popping out in places, Colonel Mounir Maqdah speaks of the dream he has for his people-the 75,000 or 100,000 (depending on who's counting) inhabitants of camp Ain Al-Hilweh, which lies on the outskirts of Sidon, a town in southern Lebanon.
As the camp spokesman, he is the only person a visiting reporter is allowed to speak with, for her safety, her interpreter translates. The five armed guards wearing tee shirts and camouflage pants who accompany her on a brief walk through the camp are also for her safety.
Maqdah is certain that the day will come when the refugees from camp Ain Al-Hilweh and the rest of the Palestinian Diaspora scattered around the globe will all go home, no matter how long it takes. "I have been fighting for 30 years, and I am ready to fight another 30 years if I have to," he said. Maqdah has the browning teeth, wispy form and long black-shot-with-gray beard of an aging revolutionary; he even wears tan fatigues and smokes thin cigarettes which he takes with small cups of thick coffee.
When he smiles, however, it's easy to forget for a moment that this is a man who has survived, by his own count, more than 100 attempts on his life. He interrupts the interview several times to take calls on his cell phone, delicately balancing the phone and a cup of coffee as he answers in soft Arabic. His take on the Middle Eastern peace process is not negotiable: "If any Palestinians are outside Palestine, even a single one, the struggle will continue," he said adding, "making resistance does not require a license." Maqdah has only one goal: to train the children of the Ain Al-Hilweh refugee camp to love their country and struggle to return to the land where they truly belong. Although he was born in this Lebanese camp, the camp leader considers Lebanon only a place from which to stage the ongoing fight to go "home." For the 39-year-old Palestinian guerilla fighter, there is only one home, Gabsiyeh, "the most beautiful village in the world," from which his family fled in 1948 when Israel declared itself a state.
For camp refugees, the area of Palestine is still very much an actual homeland, this camp just a temporary setback. Speaking, Maqdah said, for all of the camp's residents, "Every time it rains on the roof here we remember Palestine, every time we show our identity cards we remember Palestine, every time we walk in the cramped streets we remember Palestine.all the difficulties we work through here remind us of Palestine-they can kill everything in our minds but dreams of Palestine." Maqdah is proud of his role, keeping the faith alive despite whatever compromises Arafat makes to "sell out" his people. As the peace talks near a resolution that would almost certainly leave refugees in Lebanon, camps like Ain Al-Halweh may become volatile.
Most of the income generated in Ain Al-Hilweh comes from internal business, like construction, and workers earn only about $300 a month. The camp's population is squeezed into a one by one and a half-kilometer area. Graffiti provides the only color splattered across most walls; otherwise the streets are chalky white. Retired Mercedes come head-to-head in dirt roads that only allow one car to pass, and although there are tangled electrical wires overhead, many cannot afford to have electricity in their homes much of the time. Some of the camp's inhabitants die because they can't afford to go to hospitals for serious illnesses like cancer according to Maqdah. Six years ago, there were many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that would provide medical care, but now they are all gone.
The first wave of refugees in Lebanon consisted of Palestinians who fled Israel after 1948. More came after the June 1967 war and the conflict between the PLO and the Jordanian Army in 1970. According to data collected by the United Nations, Lebanon hosts more than 350,000 Palestinian refugees, scattered in 12 camps in both the North and the South. The refugees are prevented by Lebanese law from having the most desirable jobs in Lebanon. In this camp, as in the others scattered throughout Lebanon, many refugees lack the means to buy themselves and their children Palestinian identity cards, and strict measures are imposed on their movement outside of the camps. Because many of the past couple of generations' refugees may have never set foot on the soil of their native country, they remain in a strange limbo state-not willing or allowed to become Lebanese citizens, but not citizens of a would-be Palestinian nation either. It is estimated that only 10,000 of the refugees living in Lebanon have acquired Lebanese citizenship.
It is also estimated that 95 percent of the Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon are Sunni Muslims, meaning that any permanent settlement of refugees would upset the tricky balance between Lebanon's religious communities.