The large gold framed portrait of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi that adorned the wall behind the reception desk of my hotel since it opened many years ago has vanished. Also gone are the 72 green flags that flew on the white poles have also been removed. It’s not polite to inquire of the skeleton staff about who removed these items because the act of removal could become very serious offenses depending on the final outcome here. But, my friend Ismail, manning the front desk, just grinned at me when I commented on the hotel’s fine new mirror that hangs in the leader’s space. Continue reading →
BEIRUT—Perhaps historians or cultural anthropologists surveying the course of human events can identify for us a land, in addition to Palestine, where such a large percentage of a recently arrived colonial population prepared to exercise their right to depart, while many more, with actual millennial roots but victims of ethnic cleansing, prepared to exercise their right of Return. Continue reading →
SHATILA CAMP, Beirut—The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), in partnership with the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR) sponsored a delegation of British and EU MEPs to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon several weeks ago and the 10-member delegation has just released their findings. Continue reading →
SHATILA CAMP, Beirut—Lebanese opponents of civil rights for Palestinian Refugees often use
less objective and more crude wording to define “tawtin”
(“settlement”) than is normally employed in civil society discussions.
During last summer’s debate in parliament, which failed to enact laws
that would allow the world’s oldest and largest refugee community the
basic civil right to work and to own a home, the “tawtin or return”
discussion took on strident and dark meanings, which were largely
effective in frightening much of the Lebanese public from supporting
even these modest humanitarian measures. Continue reading →
BEIRUT — This observer tends to get a haircut about every four months whether I need it or not. But this morning I got more than a trim from my Hezbollah friend and barber, Abass, named after Abass ibn Ali, the brother of Hussein, both martyrs and heroes of the epic 680 A.D. internecine Muslim battle at Karbala in present day Iraq. Continue reading →
