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Lebanon Struggles to Manage Palestinian, Syrian refugees

As more Syrians flee to Lebanon, displaced Palestinians from refugee camps in Damascus threaten the fragile political and sectarian balance in the country, writes Nasser Chararah.
A Syrian refugee woman carries her child as they sit inside a tent near Tripoli January 9,2013. More than 600,000 Syrian refugees have fled to neighbouring countries exposed to the storm. Many in Lebanon and Jordan were forced to move after their tents were flooded. REUTERS/Omar Ibrahim (LEBANON - Tags: ENVIRONMENT DISASTER CIVIL UNREST)
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Lebanon cannot apply the principle of “self-distancing,” which it adopted for the crisis in Syria, to the commitment it undertook to receive the hordes of displaced Syrians flooding into its territories. The number of refugees has been unofficially estimated at 300,000, while official figures put it at 150,000. The demographic and economic capability of Lebanon to take in Syrian refugees poses a problem less severe than that of Lebanon’s capacity to absorb the Palestinians among them. Beirut is uneasy with this displacement, which brings to mind the historical Lebanese division over receiving Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, one of the key reasons for the outbreak of the 1975 civil war.

Syria has witnessed infighting recently between Palestinians, who are divided into two political camps: those that are pro-Assad and those against the regime. The first comprises most notably the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Palestine's general command, while the second encompasses in particular the Islamic factions, including Hamas, however tacitly. The concern that displaced Palestinians from Syria might transfer their military conflict from the Yarmouk camp to Lebanese refugee camps — particularly the Ain al-Helweh camp, which is already in a tenuous security situation — is taking its toll on the political climate in Lebanon.

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