Until recently, Libya was considered one of the most liberal
countries in the Arab world allowing entry and work to the
Palestinians. This led many Palestinians who had lost their
residency rights in Palestine due to the Israeli Occupation, or in
other Arab host countries due to political or administrative
reasons, to emigrate to Libya. However, as recent history has
demonstrated, residency in Libya is not as secure as many
Palestinians had hoped, and hundreds of Palestinians have been
peremptorily expelled by the Libyan regime in the last few
years.
Although it is difficult to give a precise figure of Palestinian
residents in Libya, the present estimate is about 30,000. This
figure, however, may have diminished in the last two years by the
departure of some 4,000-5,000 Palestinians in the wake of the
blockade imposed on Libya following the Security Council's
Resolution in April 1992. Due to the economic repercus¬sions
of the boycott, the Libyan regime has expressed its intention to
reduce the number of foreign workers in the country and has
deported many thousands. However, unlike other foreign laborers who
can return to their countries, the Palestinians often have no
country to go to. It is worth noting that a significant number of
the Palestinians in Libya hold refugee travel documents; they are
mostly low-income earners who must struggle to meet the basic needs
of their families; they are in Libya solely because no other
country will have them.
Today, there are about a quarter of a million Palestinians who have
no right of residency in any country, or a land in which to seek
refuge, for two reasons. First, Israel has continuously denied
Palestinians who were dis¬placed by the 1967 war, or who were
out of the country at that time, the right of return. Second, some
of the Arab host countries have attempted to reduce the number of
Palestinians in their country by changing the condi¬tions for
the right to residency.
Chronology
Since 1994, the Libyan regime has been declaring its intention to
expel Palestinians as, what it claimed, an expression of its
dissatisfaction with the peace agreement concluded between the
Palestinians and Israel.
In September 1994, the Libyan authorities refused entry to hundreds
of Palestinians who had been spending their summer vacation with
their families in the OPT. Many were subsequently turned away at
both the Egyptian-Libyan and the Israeli-Egyptian borders. The
Egyptians would not allow these Palestinians to cross without proof
that they would be allowed into Libya. As a result, tens of
families had to spend three to four weeks stranded on the borders
before Libya allowed them to return.
In a speech on September I, 1995, Qaddafi declared his intention to
expel all Palestinians from Libya. This he reiterated on September
4, in a speech given at Saloum on the Egyptian-Libyan border.
Subsequently, thousands of Palestinians were put on ships and
trucks and sent into an unknown future.
On October 27, 1995, after Arab and international intervention,
Qaddafi announced he would allow Palestinians to stay in Libya for
a period of three to six months. In the interim, he said, it was
the Palestinian leader¬ship's responsibility to find a
destination for these people once that period was up. Hence, those
stranded Palestinians who were eventually allowed back were given
no assurances that this inhuman and traumatic experience would not
recur.
Lebanon Closes the Gates
At the end of August, even before Qaddafi's official announcement,
hun¬dreds of Palestinians, along with a few Arab nationals,
were put on ships and sent to Lebanon and Syria. Initially, Lebanon
permitted 400 passengers with valid Lebanese travel documents to
enter the country and sent back the others who had no such
documents, or whose documents had expired. However, once they
realized the magnitude of the expulsion, the Lebanese authorities
closed their ports to any ship carrying Palestinians expelled from
Libya, as well as the naval lines linking the two countries.
Inspired by the sensitive political bal¬ance in Lebanon, there
were reports of greatly inflated num¬bers of
Palestinians
en route to Lebanon. This led the Lebanese government, on September
11, to adopt new measures denying all Palestinians entry into
Lebanon unless they were able to acquire a visa, in advance, from a
Lebanese embassy. Hundreds of Palestinians, who carried valid
Lebanese travel documents but who happened to be out of the country
at the time, found themselves stranded in airports and border
crossings unable to reach their families or residence in Lebanon.
Among these were children which had been on a school trip to France
and the women's delegation to the International Women's Conference
in Beijing.
These measures alarmed Palestinians in Lebanon, especially those in
camps, for they felt this was an attempt by the Lebanese government
to exploit the expulsion from Libya to reduce the number of
Palestinians living in Lebanon.
Lost at Sea, Lost in the Desert
After Lebanon denied them entry, hundreds of Palestinians found
them¬selves stranded at sea for weeks. Those who were on the
ship "Contessa M" headed to Syria were forced to remain at sea for
two weeks before Syria finally allowed them in. Some had Syrian
passports, 508 were Palestinians carrying Syrian travel documents
and the rest were other Arab nationals. Palestinians on other ships
spent days of agony and hardship shuttling between Syrian, Cypriot
and Lebanese ports, which were all closed to them, before they were
allowed back to an uncertain future in Libya.
A number of Palestinian families, packed into dangerously
overcrowd¬ed trucks, crossed the desert from Saloum to
Nuweiba, the Egyptian port on the western part of the Sinai
Peninsula, and then took the ferry to the Jordanian port of Aqaba
on the Red Sea. The journey was more than 2,000 km and was made in
the hot summer season, without any supply of basic necessities. The
majority of these refugees were Gazans or West Bankers who carried
special Jordanian passports, valid for two years, giv¬ing the
holder no right to automatic residence. Until recently, it was not
clear what value the Jordanian authorities gave these special
Jordanian passports, considered only travel documents. However, all
holders of such passports were eventually allowed into Jordan. A
group of 177 reached Aqaba by the end of September and thus, to the
OPT through Allenby Bridge. At least 20, holding Egyptian travel
documents, were forced to make the long journey back to Saloum in
Libya.
Those who reached Aqaba were totally exhausted and traumatized by
their journey. They had their first bath in three weeks. During
their journey, they had not been able to find adequate medical
attention for their children who were suffering from diarrhea and
other illnesses. Among the group were university students in their
final year who were being prevented from grad¬uating by the
expulsion. As one woman said, "We have spent the most
diffi¬cult time in our life ... we made tents out of our
clothes to protect our children. We lived in conditions fit for
animals and we were treated like animals."
The 'Camp of Shame' at Saloum
During the last week in August, waves of Palestinians began
arriving at the crossing point of Saloum. The largest group arrived
just before Qaddafi's speech on September 4, 1995. During the third
week of October 1995, the number of refugees at Saloum peaked at
around 600, despite earlier reports that it exceeded 1,000. The
population of the camp was always changing, as those who had valid
residency documents for Egypt, Jordan and the West Bank continued
their journey east across the desert.
Qaddafi referred to the camp at Saloum as "the Camp of Return," but
the Palestinians prefer to call it "the Camp of Shame." Although
the camp is located by the main road in the no man's land between
Egypt and Libya, it is under Libyan jurisdiction. The land upon
which the camp is located is rocky with a thin layer of sand. There
is no water and the lack of vegetative cover means that the camp is
totally exposed to the elements. During the summer season, the
temperatures go down to five degrees centigrade at night. The camp
is 200m by 250m and is enclosed by a barbed-wire fence. The area
out¬side this enclosure reportedly has a high density of mines
planted there dur ing the Egyptian-Libyan hostilities between
1975-1980, and a large population of snakes and scorpions. There
are no permanent structures on the site.
An inter-agency mission, including the UNHCR (United Nations High
Commission for Refugees), MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres), UNRWA
(United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and WHO (World Health
Organization), which visited the site on October 30, 1995, found
that the conditions of the camp were inhumane and inadequate for
even a limited stay. Up until the end of the mission's stay, there
was no food shortage. The Libyan authorities, then, were giving the
refugees a daily cooked meal, while the UNHCR, aided by
international donors, provided tents, rice, lentils, cheese and
other items. However, the mission noted that, if the Libyans
stopped providing cooked food, a problem would arise,
especial¬ly since the Egyptian authorities had decided not to
allow any further con¬voys of relief items to cross from their
side of the border. Two days after the mission finished their
report, the Libyans ceased to provide the refugees with food and
the danger of malnutrition and even starvation grew. Drinking water
was supplied by the UNHCR in the form of bottled water, but there
was urgent need for water for washing and personal hygiene. All
water provided from outside the area of the camp needed to be
transported by cars and stored at the site. There were logistical
problems, however, regarding the installation of adequate equipment
for the storage of water, and given the site's topography, there
were also difficulties in the con¬struction of adequate
latrines on the site.
Conclusion
Almost daily, our sensibilities are shocked by scenes of
Palestinians, a large number of whom are women, children, and the
elderly, stranded in air¬ports, border crossings and even on
ships. In a region that has recently embarked on a peace agreement
between the Israelis and the Palestinians, how is it possible to
ignore the stark contradiction between these tragic scenes and the
much-vaunted peace process?
It is unacceptable that Palestinians be prevented from returning to
their country in which they were born and where their families had
lived for generations simply because they are not Jews. Neither is
it acceptable that the Palestinians must queue at the gates of
neighboring Arab countries, beg¬ging for entry, or that they
remain victims of political exploitation and of nar¬row and
selfish interests of some governments in the Arab host
countries.
There is an urgent need to put an end to this human tragedy of the
dis¬placed Palestinians who have no refuge in any Arab
country, to ensure their return to their homeland and to find
resources to facilitate their repa¬triation in Palestine.