Bill for rebuilding Nahr al-Bared to top $445 million
11 Jun 2008
Rebuilding the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp and six surrounding Lebanese communities will cost about $445 million and "in a best-case scenario" will finish up by June 2011, said documents released by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Monday at a briefing session ahead of the June 23 donor conference in Vienna to solicit funds for the rebuilding.
The documents released on Monday said reconstruction would commence "at the latest" in January next year. The camp - officially home to more than 31,000 Palestinians - was largely destroyed in the three-month battle last summer between Fatah al-Islam militants and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).
Karen AbuZayd, commissioner general of UNRWA, told The Daily Star that some donors had promised to contribute to the rebuilding.
"We have some indications of pledges - $5 million, $10 million - but we'll need much more," she said, adding that she had visited the camp on Sunday and was been impressed by the Palestinians' hardy attitude.
"They know it's going to be three years before some of them have a home.
"They're not complaining too much. They'd like more electricity.They'd like more water. They'd like a job. They're being wonderful, the refugees. We always say the Palestinians are extraordinarily resilient."
After the 2007 conflict, many Palestinians expressed doubts that anyone would ever rebuild the camp, and UNRWA director for Lebanon Richard Cook said some people still doubted the reconstruction would take place.
"People are still skeptical," Cook said. "To the people that are going back home, we want to show that commitment to reconstructing the camp.
This is an opportunity to get that message out, that we are committed to doing it."
"We have an immense job," he added. "We have to rebuild these people's homes. We have to rebuild these people's lives. There is no alternative to that."
Austria decided to host the June 23 donor conference for two reasons:
"To help the Palestinian refugees who have been affected by what happened in the camp" and to help the Lebanese government, said Ralph Scheide, director of the Near and Middle East department at the Austrian Foreign Ministry.
"This is about Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity," he said, adding that the issue of the state's reach into the country's 12 refugee camps was an issue "between the Lebanese and the Palestinians."
Prime Minister-designate Fouad Siniora was "very much engaged" in the preparations of the conference, Scheide added.
UNRWA, which provides services to Palestinian refugees throughout the region, will be responsible for the renovation of the old camp, a ring-shaped area bordered by the Mediterranean Sea and the site of the original refugee camp, which had long outgrown its UN-mandated borders. The old camp, with dense construction and narrow roads, was the hardest-hit area of the camp in the 15 weeks of fighting which killed about 170 LAF soldiers, more than 200 militants and at least 40 civilians.
The battle displaced all the camp's inhabitants, about half of whom took shelter in schools in the neighboring Beddawi refugee camp and the village of Beddawi. About half of the residents of the new camp - the area closest to the coastal highway which was damaged less in the conflict - have returned to reside there, although some are not living in their original homes, head of the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee, Ambassador Khalil Makkawi, said.
UNRWA is providing rent subsidies of $200 per month to more than 3,000 families of the camp's official count of 5,449 resident families, UNRWA has said. In the new camp, UNRWA has also thrown up about 570 prefabricated, six-by-three-meter metal housing units without air conditioning. UNRWA has been taking measures to reduce the temperature in the metal housing units, such as installing bathroom tiles and putting up concrete to reduce the structures' exposure to the sun, said UNRWA public information officer Hoda Samra Souaiby.
UNRWA has also erected three prefabricated schools for students from families who resided in Nahr al-Bared, although some students are still attending schools in two shifts - one group has classes in the morning and early afternoon, while a different group attends class in the afternoon and early evening, Souaiby added.