Will They Ever Belong?

At seven years old Abu Afif was told he was going on a little vacation and that he would return to Palestine after 10 days, while things settled between Israel and Palestine. Almost sixty years later, Abu Afif, like millions of other Palestinians, still hasn’t returned and lives in Burj Barajneh, one of several Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Three of the main countries the Palestinian Diaspora spread to were Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. In Lebanon, there are 12 refugee camps that house thousands of Palestinians each, building their own societies within a larger Lebanese society.


Burj Barajneh was the camp I stayed in for two weeks this summer. We drove
into the only road in the camp. As I got out, walked to my temporary “home,” I had to zigzag my way through numerous alleys that flowed with sewage and waste. Trying to look up to the sky, there was nothing to see. All I saw were countless electric wires.



Like Mexicans in the US, Palestinians in Lebanon suffer from minimum wage. Palestinians cannot usually find jobs outside the refugee camps. However, if they do, it’s probably a low-wage job like a painter, carpenter and so on. Many refugees graduate from medicine, engineering and other majors. But later, they unfortunately find it very difficult to work in their field. If they can’t find a way out of the country to somewhere where they could actually do their job, they end up opening a small business in the camp itself for very low incomes, or they divert into another direction in life.



Due to their economic, social and political background, Palestinians have created a new culture that will allow them to adjust their way of life to this subculture that they have created. The term subculture in sociology basically means a smaller group contained within a larger culture, so a world within a world. Palestinians have established and try to maintain their identity and culture within a complete different culture, the Lebanese culture.


Palestinians in Lebanon also suffer from an identity crisis. Like many other Palestinians around the world, they don’t really have a culture and try to adapt to what they hear about the Palestinian culture. The only home they really had was taken away and the “home” they currently live in can’t really be considered a home because it could be taken away from them at any time.