Enab Baladi – Khaled al-Jeratli
“We do not accept Syrians… only Lebanese refugees,” was the response of the Lebanese authorities to Maryam Madallah, a Syrian refugee who had been residing in the city of Tyre and headed to Western Bekaa.
Madallah, like other Lebanese and Syrians, fled under continuous Israeli airstrikes that have persisted for days.
Syrians in Lebanon suffer from discriminatory treatment after the displacement wave caused by the Israeli military escalation. Shelters refuse to take them in, and some were barred from providing aid to their fellow Syrians.
Madallah was forced to sleep on the street for two consecutive nights, as she told Enab Baladi, until she sneaked into her aunt’s tent in the Al-Marj camp in Western Bekaa because the Lebanese authorities prohibited old Syrian displaced people from hosting new Syrian refugees “under the threat of legal accountability.”
Maryam’s relative, Dalal Madallah, told Enab Baladi that she hosted three displaced families in her “humble” tent, saying, “I couldn’t shut my tent door in my relatives’ faces.”
According to Lebanese government estimates, 1.5 million Syrian refugees are living in various parts of Lebanon, but registered numbers with the United Nations Refugee Agency are around 774,000.
The refugees are primarily distributed in the Bekaa area with 292,000, followed by northern Lebanon with 219,000, Beirut with 175,000, and southern Lebanon with 86,000, according to the UNHCR.
The UNHCR states that 90% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in extreme poverty.
Discrimination
Dalal Madallah said that municipalities in Lebanon have banned associations from distributing relief materials without their supervision. When her relatives approached the municipality building in the area where she resides, officials told her that they restricted aid distribution to Lebanese families only.
She added that the municipality banned a charity organization from entering her tent because it housed Syrians, while humanitarian organizations distributed blankets and mattresses only to Lebanese families living near the camp.
Maryam Madallah said that a charity refused to register her name because the “available slots” were full. Municipal officials also refused to give her mattresses and blankets to warm her three children, who were sleeping on the pavements of Western Bekaa.
Maryam told Enab Baladi she is considering returning to Syria, but the cost of travel is approximately 200 US dollars per person. Moreover, her husband is wanted by Syrian security branches, which would force her to return with her children, leaving her husband behind in Lebanon.
On the other hand, Layla fled from Sidon, where she was staying, towards Beirut, as the Israeli strikes intensified. She got stuck in traffic for hours but eventually reached her destination.
Layla told Enab Baladi that the checkpoints established by the Lebanese authorities to facilitate traffic handled Syrian identity holders, including herself, poorly, subjecting her to racist comments at these checkpoints.
Layla didn’t go to Beirut because she had a shelter there but because it was “safer.” She recently met friends willing to host her in Beirut. Otherwise, she would have remained on the street to this day, as she wouldn’t consider approaching a shelter even if it were her only option.
This mistreatment extended to inspecting the victims at the sites of their deaths, as happened with Shadi al-Tawbah’s relatives, who was killed in southern Lebanon.
Al-Tawbah’s family hails from the city of Nawa in western Daraa. He and his wife were killed by an Israeli strike in coastal Sidon in southern Lebanon while their three children were transferred to a hospital, which the family initially could not locate.
One of the relatives of the young man, currently displaced in Western Bekaa, told Enab Baladi that the strike occurred in coastal Sidon on September 22. When the victim’s brother tried to inspect his brother’s home after the strike, Lebanese security prevented him from approaching and provided no information about his brother’s family’s fate.
For four days, the young man’s brother persistently searched in hospitals until he managed to find the three surviving children of his brother’s family.
The authorities provided no information to the young Syrian, and he received no assistance in locating the surviving children of his brother’s family. Meanwhile, the danger remains imminent for him and others, among the Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
War offers no excuse
Maryam Madallah said that the airstrikes targeting a house neighboring the one she was staying in in Tyre forced her and her family to flee without taking their furniture or even their clothes.
She added that the priority for evacuating families from the area was given to Lebanese people only, which forced Syrian families to sleep on the streets in a security-wise dangerous and bombing-prone area, waiting for an opportunity to leave.
She told Enab Baladi that a small bus owned by a Syrian transported her and her family to Western Bekaa after the Lebanese authorities refused to allow her to leave before evacuating Lebanese families.
The young woman said, “Even in times of war and displacement, they treat Syrians badly.”
Sohaib Abdo, a human rights activist residing in Lebanon, told Enab Baladi that a Syrian family displaced during the first day of the escalation headed to a shelter, but they were informed by the shelter’s overseers of the possibility of inspections by the Lebanese General Security, checking the residence status of Syrians, which might expose them to deportation, forcing the refugees to leave the shelter.
Many Syrians have been residing in Lebanon illegally for years. Recently, Lebanese authorities began inspecting and deporting those who are staying illegally (without residence permits) back to Syria.
Abdo added that this situation was expected, especially since the Lebanese military intelligence expelled Syrian refugees attempting to seek refuge in shelters with the onset of the escalation in southern Lebanon in November 2023.
The mayor’s authority
Regarding the handling mechanisms for Syrian refugees, Baalbek Governor and head of the Disaster Risk Management Room at the governorate center, Bashir Khadr, told the Manateq news website that receiving refugees in shelters is the responsibility of the municipality head who has the right to accept or refuse them based on the municipality’s capabilities.
He pointed out that if there is a shortcoming from the municipalities in accommodating Syrian refugees, they should communicate with the UNHCR, especially when they feel they are in a dangerous place or need to move from one place to another.
Khadr added, “Syrian refugees should ease the pressure on municipalities that operate with very limited capabilities.”
The news website considered that Khadr’s “ambiguous” stance opens the door and grants the authority to the municipality head to refuse to accept Syrians fleeing the “Israeli war machine,” as is the case in the Tyre district, southern Lebanon.
The Disaster Management Unit in Tyre refuses to accommodate Syrians in shelters, even if under the pretext of insufficient capacity and limited resources, besides the possibility of mayors invoking the “regional specificity” that Lebanese are adept at marketing.
Thousands headed to Syria
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Wednesday that thousands of Lebanese and Syrians are fleeing from Lebanon to Syria amidst ongoing Israeli bombings.
The UNHCR added on its official website that large crowds, including women and children, are gathering in queues after spending the night in the open amid low temperatures, some suffering from recent injuries due to Israeli bombings in Lebanon.
On Friday, September 27, the UNHCR stated that over 30,000 people, mostly Syrians, crossed into Syria from Lebanon in the past 72 hours.The number of arrivals to Syria is increasing amid the escalating Israeli bombardments targeting Hezbollah headquarters and residential villages and neighborhoods.
The UNHCR Representative in Syria, Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, said that about 80% of these crossers are Syrians and 20% are Lebanese.
Half of the displaced are children and teenagers, while fewer men cross than women, according to what the UN official told the Reuters news agency.
Llosa added during a press conference, “They are crossing from a country at war to a country facing conflict and crisis for the past 13 years, which is a very tough choice.”
The UNHCR official said they would have to see in the coming days how many people will cross the border towards Syria.