Palestinians in Lebanon still wait for homes

Last year during fighting, Islamic radicals who were neither Palestinian nor Lebanese were hiding out in the Nahr el Bared camp in northern Lebanon and attacked an army checkpoint, kicking off a three month battle. The Lebanese Army ended up leveling the city which still lays in rubble. Many say they’re glad the militants are gone, but wonder why their houses had to be destroyed in the process. The residents live now in temporary shelters just blocks from their destroyed homes. Six people live in one �container,� and residents complain that they offer little shelter from the hot weather in the summer and the cold weather in the winter. In one shelter, the bathroom is immediately next to the kitchen. He and his neighbors are resigned to living here until the international community can come up with the funds to rebuild the former homes. A donor’s conference last month raised $122 million dollars. Officially the work will take three years but this resident isn’t optimistic. The army has destroyed the old city in barbed wire to prevent residents from going back in. there’s no sign of any reconstruction of any kind, but Lebanese say the work is about to begin. Another politician says the positive note out of this conflict has been the spotlight put on the substandard way Palestinians in Lebanon were living and how they’re treated and the civil services they’re denied.