BEIRUT: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas paid a rare visit yesterday to a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, placing a wreath at the cemetery in the Shatila camp in the capital Beirut.
A small crowd gathered ahead of his brief visit to welcome him at the Martyrs Cemetery on the outskirts of the camp, one of 12 housing Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
“I’m here to welcome him because he’s our president,” said Fatma Abdul Hadi, an elderly lady in a white headscarf with a black and white Palestinian scarf wrapped around her neck.
“What we want and hope for from him is to help us get back to Palestine, that’s all I want,” she added.
Also there to welcome the president were a number of youth members of the Fatah party Abbas heads, and a boy scout band.
Jamil Hassan, 36, had also turned out to see the president, a year after he fled a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, escaping the violence that has ravaged the country for more than two years.
“We left because it was dangerous for me, my wife and kids,” he said.
“But life there before was easy. The state protected us and with qualifications you could do whatever you wanted, become a pilot, become a doctor.”
The approximately 470,000 Palestinians living in overcrowded camps in Lebanon are barred from around 70 professions and prohibited from owning property.
Their living conditions in camps in Lebanon have been described as the worst for Palestinian refugees anywhere in the region.
AFP
