Reconstruction work for Nahr al-Bared set to begin

Laying the first foundation stone for the reconstruction
of Nahr El Bared earlier this year

BEIRUT: A contractor will soon begin laying the foundations for the reconstruction of Palestinians’ homes destroyed at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp during the battle in mid-2007, officials for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) told The Daily Star on Tuesday. The first part of the rebuilding effort – of a sector with some 150 structures, including housing for about 500 families – will take about a year to complete, meaning that refugee families will return to their homes next summer, about three years since the conflict erupted in May 2007, said Charles Higgins, UNRWA’s project director for Nahr al-Bared. More than three months of fighting between the Leba­nese Armed Forces and Fatah al-Islam militants largely leveled the camp, which had officially been home to more than 31,000 Palestinian refugees.

The $18.1 million contract with Al-Jihad for Commerce and Contracting is for the reconstruction of one of eight sectors to be rebuilt in the old camp: the area nearest the sea which suffered the heaviest damage during the 15-week conflict, Higgins added. All of the camp’s residents eventually fled Nahr al-Bared during the fighting, which killed 168 soldiers and more than 220 militants, as well as 42 civilians.

About 3,100 families of Nahr al-Bared’s official count of 5,449 families have moved back into the new camp – the area between the old camp and the coastal highway – although many of those are former inhabitants of the old camp who are renting accommodations in the new camp, Higgins said. Another 756 families are living in temporary, one-room housing units erected by UNRWA in the new camp, Higgins said.

UNRWA has raised $102 million of the $328 million necessary to rebuild the old camp, an amount “ample” to cover the work planned in the coming months, said UNRWA senior fundraising executive Peter Ford. UNRWA had planned to collect donations over a number of years for the reconstruction, which Lebanese and UNRWA officials estimated would last until April 2012, Ford added. The Lebanese state is managing the $116 million reconstruction effort for the new camp and nearby Lebanese communities.

“The response on Nahr al-Bared has been pretty good,” he said. “It’s been a little slow in materializing, but we always knew it would be a long haul. We planned that it wouldn’t come all at once.

“Operationally, we don’t need an injection of funds for some months yet. We’re exp-ecting that donors will come forward as operational requirements develop.”

With the plans to rebuild the camp in eight stages, UNRWA is hoping that seeing the completion of some sectors will encourage donors to contribute funds for the remaining reconstruction, Higgins said.

“Our strategy is that we go out there and show results on the ground,” he said, adding that the $102 million already pledged would suffice to rebuild two sectors and the majority of the third. “Our expectation is that success should generate further success.”

A pledge wa made in May by Saudi Arabia to contribute $25 million for the rebuilding helped prod the US into an­nouncing a $30 million donation last month, Ford said.

“Donors were hoping to see some concrete manifestation of Arab support,” he said. At a June 2008 donor conference in Vienna, then-Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said that four Gulf states – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates – would fund half of all reconstruction costs.

The Saudi pledge has spurred another Gulf state into funding talks, which have reached an advanced stage, with UNRWA expecting to announce a new pledge in the coming weeks, Ford said.

“These guys in the Gulf are always looking over their shoul­ders at what the neighbors are doing,” he said. “We’re concentrating on one big donation at a time and counting on peer pressure to do its work.”

The summer’s fundraising activity has shown that the Gulf countries have gotten over their feelings from the time of the Vienna conference that their deep pockets were being taken for granted, Ford added.

“Some of the Arab donors felt that they were being bounced, and this turned them off for a while,” he said. “We’re now back on track.”

Meanwhile, the rebuilding schedule has fallen six months behind schedule because of unplanned delays caused by the need to excavate and document archaeological finds under the camp, Higgins said. Reconstruction of the first sector had been slated for January this year, but the contract with Al-Jihad began on July 1, he added. Concerning the original April 2012 completion date for the entire rebuilding process, Higgins said the end of the reconstruction would wind up being a function of fundraising, because UNRWA cannot sign contracts for any of the eights sectors until pledges turn into money.

UNRWA has finished removing more than 90 percent of the rubble remaining after the 2007 conflict, while uncovering more than 9,500 pieces of unexploded ordnance, Higgins said.

As or the displaced refugees, many are overcoming their initial doubts about whether Nahr al-Bared would ever be rebuilt, although much “ingrained skepticism” remains among a Palestinian populace with a history of conflict and displacement, Higgins added. “The ‘if’ question in people’s minds seems to have been answered,” he said.

The situation for the camp’s former residents has improved since the days of the fighting, but many problems persist, with the worst situation plaguing those living in the temporary, prefabricated housing units, said Samiha Wanas, head of community development project in Nahr al-Bared for the Palestinian NGO NABAA.

Families in the temporary units lack a supply of drinking water, and UNRWA generators provide electricity for three hours in the morning and four in the evening, she said. Each temporary housing unit is a 3-meter-by-6-meter room with corrugated metal walls.

Former camp inhabitants are also suffering economic difficulties, as commerce is slow to return to the camp, which had enjoyed vibrant trade as one of the least poor of Lebanon’s dozen Palestinian camps, she said. Palestinians continue to endure limited employment opportunities, as Lebanese law prohibits them from working in a number of mostly professional vocations, Wanas said.

About 3,100 families continue receiving the $150 monthly rental subsidies, and almost all are given monthly food parcels by UNRWA, Higgins said.

Schools in the new camp continue to operate with students attending classes in morning and afternoon shifts, and residents have been complaining about the education environment, Higgins said.

Story courtesy of the Daily Star.