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Boundaries and Political Agency of Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon Zeinab Amiri Iowa State University

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Boundaries and Political Agency of Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon Zeinab Amiri Iowa State University Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2016 Boundaries and political agency of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon Zeinab Amiri Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd Part of the Architecture Commons, Islamic World and Near East History Commons, Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons, and the Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Amiri, Zeinab, "Boundaries and political agency of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon" (2016). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 15655. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/15655 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Boundaries and political agency of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon by Zeinab Amiri A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE Major: Architecture Program of Study Committee: Marwan Ghandour, Major Professor Ross Exo Adams Nell Gabiam Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2016 Copyright © Zeinab Amiri, 2016. All rights reserved. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ....................................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. iv INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................................................... 4 HISTORY OF PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN LEBANON................................................ 11 First phase: 1948-1968, years of adaptation and restriction ............................................... 12 Second phase: 1968-1982, years of revolution ................................................................... 15 Third phase: 1982-1990, Years of Wars ............................................................................. 19 Fourth phase: 1990-Present, years after the civil war ......................................................... 21 THREE CAMPS: THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL BORDERS ...................................... 25 Shatila Camp ....................................................................................................................... 29 Nahr Al-Bared Camp .......................................................................................................... 33 ‘Ain al-Hilweh .................................................................................................................... 39 STATE OF SIEGE .................................................................................................................. 45 Expansion and Consolidation of the Boundaries ................................................................ 46 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 55 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................... 56 APPENDIX: THE CAIRO ACCORD (1969) ........................................................................ 61 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Marwan Ghandour, for the patient guidance, encouragement and advice he has provided throughout my time as his student. I have been extremely lucky to have a supervisor who cared so much about my work, and who responded to my questions and queries so promptly. Also, I would like to thank my committee members Nell Gabiam and Ross Exo Adams for their guidance and support throughout the course of this research. In addition, I would also like to thank my parents for providing me opportunities to peruse my own goals. All the support they have provided me over the years was the greatest gift anyone has ever given me. iv ABSTRACT New technologies of power are taking control of body and life. Historically, refugee camps were produced as a result of the sociopolitical effects of new technologies of power. In some instances, refugee camps have been conceptualized as “total institutions” where bodies are disciplined and where control is an integral and defining component of the structure of the institution and its daily routine. In many ways, the space of Palestinian camps in Lebanon has signified a mechanism of control for multiple political powers. These camps have had fixed boundaries since their establishment. The configuration of the boundary reflects the power of Lebanese state over the camp residents and its means of surveillance and control over the spaces of the camps. The refugees are expected to remain within their boundary where Lebanese army checkpoints can control what goes into the camp. It is an environment under continuous potential siege. Manifestation of living under potential siege is displayed differently among the three camps that I chose to discuss in this thesis; namely Shatila, Nahr Al-Bared and ‘Ain al-Hilweh. These three camps show different conditions of integration with the spaces outside their respective boundaries. The spatial characteristics of these boundaries defined different degrees of spatial assimilation of the camps within the surrounding space the Lebanese state. Navigating through Giorgio Agamben’s “state of exception” and Michel Agier’s “extraterritoriality” as theoretical frameworks of the space of the camp, this thesis maps the political agency of Palestinians in relationship to the process of urbanization of camp border in order to assert the spatial exclusivity of these two frameworks within the conditions of the Palestinian refugee in Lebanon. 1 INTRODUCTION "UNHCR's annual Global Trends” reports that the worldwide displacement in 2014 was at the highest level ever recorded. This report shows the number of people forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 had risen to a staggering 59.5 million compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago. Globally, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. If this was the population of a country, it would be the world's 24th biggest. Around 25% of the whole refugee population worldwide live in camps. As a result of the Syrian civil war that started in 2011, more than 4.8 million Syrians are refugees and 6.6 million are displaced within Syria. Only 500,000 of these refugees live in camps, while others are considered urban refugees who live in towns and cities and (UNHCR, 2016). Some of the camps that were established after the beginning of the Syrian war have transformed extensively, such as the Zaatari camp in Jordan, which was established in 2012. This camp started as a series of tents to shelter 15,000 refugees but by March 2016 around 80,000 Syrian refugees live there. The camp is gradually turning to a permanent settlement with all components of a city. With growing refugee crisis, these sudden human settlements signal the future of urbanization, where places, which were created in emergency situations become permanent settlements. Even though this phenomenon is not quiet new, it is barely recognized as a form of urbanization. Palestinian refugee camps are the future of all camps that are “born each day in the world” (Agier 2012). With more than 65 years of existence, Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East are the best places to study this phenomenon. One third of the five million Palestinian refugees in the World, more than 1.5 million, live in 58 registered camps across the Middle East (UNRWA). These camps were initially erected as temporary spaces to settle 2 Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland in 1948. Formation of these camps materialized under complicated socio-political circumstances. The space of the Palestinian refugee camp have been studied across multiple disciplines where in some cases they are considered as informal settlements embodying conditions that are usually associated with informality. But there is lack of enough research in architecture and urban design, which specifically studies the urbanization of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon in conjunction with the physical and political space of Lebanon. The spaces of the camps are registered through multiple physical and social boundaries, which have been transforming during the Palestinians prolonged presence in Lebanon. In this research, I will discuss the production of the Palestinian refugee camps in association with the socio-political conditions in Lebanon with a focus on the relationship of the camps’ boundaries to the changing political agency of the refugees. Giorgio Agamben considers that modern states retain the camps under the “state of exception” status to continue their existence, as a form of biopolitics, as a materialization of control of the body by the state or power. In fact, camps are considered spaces to put refugees in a state of bare life or a human without political life (Agamben 1998). Furthermore, Michel Agier, who conducted extensive research on long-lasting camps as city- camps over the Middle East and Africa, sees camps as “the most advanced
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