Palestinian refugees

I have learned so much about the situation for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon this week. On Tuesday we went to the UNESCO Palace - Beirut and watched Stories from Palestinian Artists. It was the final event of the project Mustaqbal: New perspective for the Palestinian youth from Beddawi and Burj el Semali.

Three movies were shown:

1.     Smile, you are in south Lebanon, by Dalia Al-Kury

2.     The Coffee Smell, by Fadi Dabaja

3.     Neither here, nor there, by Hicham Kayed

All three of them taught me something new, but it was movie number 3 that gave me a wakeup call. It was about young boys living in the refugee camp in Beirut.  They had lived all their life in this camp, with no hopes for the future. They were not able to get a job in Lebanon, no money for education, no daily activity other than playing cards. They were looking for a future, and their only hope as far as they could see was to immigrate. Some of them had tried this already, but been sent back beaten and neglected.

One had made it to Germany and was still living there. When he was in the refugee camp, his only wish was to get away. Now his only wish was to go back to his family. He lived in Berlin illegally, had a low paid job, no network, feeling lonely, feeling depressed….

 This documentary also had a scene from a refugereception in Berlin. They lived like in prison, maybe worse because they didn’t know for how many years they had to stay inside this house. They were not allowed to walk out. 

The situations for a lot of the Palestinians are really Neither here, nor there. I wonder how the situation is like for the refugees in Norwegian refugee receptions? Wonder what the stories would be like? Maybe that should be my next project, Stories from the inside. If the stories comes out, the norwegians might not be so scared of welcoming refugees to their neighbourhood?