LEBANON:Recent violence has forced many families to flee from the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, writes Louise Rougin Bedawi refugee camp, Lebanon.
Over the years, the tents have come down and concrete apartment blocks have gone up on this hillside overlooking the Mediterranean.
In the course of six decades, institutions have taken root here: kindergartens, schools, medical facilities. Residents bury their dead beneath tiny white headstones framed by pink roses and purple bougainvillea at the small cemetery.
The streets of Bedawi, teeming with honking cars, children on bicycles and scooter-riding teenagers, resemble streets in Lebanese villages anywhere.
But unlike other towns dotted around the mountains here, Bedawi is a town in limbo.
In this nation of about four million Lebanese, who number Sunni and Shia Muslims as well as Christians and minority Druze, 400,000 Palestinians live in a dozen scattered "camps". Lebanese families in the area surrounding Bedawi have had little contact with the Palestinians. Although there is local commerce, the refugees are not allowed to hold anything but menial jobs outside the camp, all but guaranteeing a life of poverty for children growing up there. The Palestinians have no passports and are not allowed to own land.
For several days last week, Lebanese soldiers unleashed a barrage of firepower at Islamic militants hiding inside a neighbouring refugee camp.
Fleeing the shelling, more than 15,000 Palestinians came to the Bedawi camp, joining 11,000 refugees already living here.
On these crowded streets, aid workers took names as minibuses ferried tall stacks of thin foam mattresses to the new arrivals. In front of a barber shop, a Japanese news crew was filming.
"Everyone's here," said Mona Said (31), a Palestinian resident of Bedawi, as she weaved her way through the packed alleyways. "It's great," she added, giving a thumbs up.
The battle and subsequent flight of civilians once again brought attention to the issue of the refugees here, further straining the relationship between Palestinians and Lebanese. Many Lebanese have rallied behind the army, with volunteers from neighboring villages also offering to go into the camp and fight. This week, several refugees told of Sunnis from the surrounding area shooting at them as they fled.
On the facebook.com website in recent days, young Lebanese have created a multitude of discussion groups, with several posts containing racist remarks against the refugees. Many Lebanese hold Palestinians responsible for sparking the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. They accuse Palestinian militants of making the country a battleground in their fight against Israel.
Palestinians are Sunni, but posters of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Shia group Hizbullah, have gone up around this camp since Hizbullah's 34-day war with Israel.
Here in Bedawi, residents forced the radical group Fatah al-Islam out when they sought to establish a foothold late last year. The militants then went to the Nahr el-Bared camp a few miles away, establishing a paramilitary base there. Fleeing residents said they were trapped between a small, militant group of foreigners espousing an alien, al-Qaeda-style ideology and the Lebanese army, which shelled the camp, bringing down homes, schools and mosques.
"We're born in debt, and we spend our lives paying," said Firas Abdallah (22), who had sought refuge in Bedawi after shelling destroyed his home last week. "I feel that we as Palestinians, whatever we do, we'll always be regarded as foreigners, outsiders," said Siham Zagmout (54).
Zagmout was born in another camp farther south in 1953. By the time she was 12, Zagmout's family came to the Bedawi camp where she roamed the streets.
"It's true we were poor, but our family bonds were very strong," Zagmout said. Her parents told her stories of the land they had farmed for wheat, grapes and figs but now couldn't return to - a village where boys and girls met at the well to flirt.
"From hearing all these stories, sometimes in my dreams I would see the fields and orchards, and a big shining sun."
At 20 she married a young man from the camp. She named her first daughter Mona, meaning hope. The couple also had Raoul, now 29, and 17-year-old Dima, whose name means summer clouds. "We had nothing to offer our children, only an education."
She recalled her past as she sat in a courtyard filled with potted flowers outside the kindergarten she co-founded in 1975. Mona had grown up at this kindergarten and eventually become a teacher there, too.
"We do everything to give the children some of the rights of children in other places," said Zagmout, who wore a traditional dress and headscarf.
Her daughter, now 31, wore new Nike trainers, jeans and a T-shirt advertising a group organising after-school activities for kids called Right to Play.
Her daughter's eyebrows were carefully plucked, and she was carrying a black notebook with the group's motto on a sticker: "Look after yourself. Look after one another." She listened patiently to the adults and children who came up to her, demanding her ear.
A few years ago, Mona took a job working as a nanny and teacher for the Saudi royal family. She had a big salary, a chauffeured car and travelled with the royals. She divided her salary between her family in Bedawi and a camp orphanage.
The toys of the youngest prince could have provided for hundreds of children in Bedawi, she said. Living with such excess knowing her family lived in poverty proved too distressing. "I hated myself," said Mona, who returned to Lebanon two years later. "Sometimes when I sat down to eat with them for dinner, I remembered our life here."
It was getting close to 10pm, and the two women had been helping the recently arrived refugees to find accommodation in schools and with other families. Like her daughter, Zagmout had enjoyed the influx of people. They, too, were hosting a family of 15 people in their modest home. "You forget about yourself in a situation like this," she said.