The Syrians will grow to become half the population of Lebanon by the year 2013

The 2010 Statistics also estimated Damascus’ population and its countryside at 4.4 million, including half a million Palestinians; most of them are in the Yarmouk refugee camp. Only in two years a lot of them have fled to Lebanon and Jordan and the reason is: 

First: Jordan; they have been displaced to it from Damascus and Deraa, but this country manages the refugees in camps already established and are newly established near the border. 

Jordan monitors the movement of refugees and their exercises of professions, and creeps around their security, affiliations and political and religious linking. Though, serious problematic took place a few days ago between the refugees of the Zaatari camp and the Jordanian population. 

Jordan fears the infiltration of elements, not only from the “Victory Front”, but also from Islamic movements as the “Muslim Brotherhood”, who can communicate with others in Jordan, what would destabilize the kingdom. Jordan is working to raise the issue of refugees to the Security Council. 

Second: Lebanon is the closest country to the border and is easily breached without legal arrangements; where they can live, move, and work without restrictions. 

As for Lebanon, there is a complete confusion regarding this file within the government when it was effective. Today, confusion turns into apathy in the caretaker government. Officials only count the influx of refugees at a rate of 2,000 a day, and have an empty complaint! Even, calling the Security Council to discuss the file remained frozen. 

The “brethrens” those who care about the Syrian people completely ignored the call made by the President of the Republic Michel Suleiman in front of the Arab League, in order to actually bear the burden of distributing the refugees not only with words, and thus not to make the younger and the weaker brother responsible for this issue only. Even the promises of the donor countries to send billion and a half billion dollars at the conference of Kuwait evaporated. 

Some officials support the idea of containing the refugees in camps, while others are opponents who have been fed up with the experience of the Palestinian refugee camps, which turned into sort of military camps, and those officials exchange accusations against each other such as: “You are a racist” and/or “Your interests are factional”. 

The Lebanese split over the entity-related files is chronic, and the explosion of the war in 1975 was one of the manifestations of the split over the Palestinian refugees. Today, the government is divided because of the Syrian refugees: 

-    A Christian team (in the traditional political sense) is represented by the “Free Patriotic Movement” (FPM), which restores the “concerns” of the Kataeb (Phalange) Party with the Palestinians in the seventies of the last century. This team called for the closure of the border in the face of the Syrian refugees, and for distributing them on the Arab states in accordance with the respective ability of each. It tends to focus on the security, political, and demographic dimensions of the file, and accuses the others of alienating the sovereignty and messing with the entity for factional interests. 

-    A team accusing the “FPM” of “racism”, recalling the tone of “isolationism” cited against the Kataeb before the war. This group tends to focus on the humanitarian and social aspects of the file, and the political, security, or demographic dimension is kept on the margin. This team reduces the overall size of the influx of refugees. 

Realistically, the required treatment is a humanitarian - economic one, but its political, security, and demographic dimensions are very dangerous. These are the facts and figures that prove this: In the spring of 2012, UNHCR expected that the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon would reach at the end of that year to 100 thousand, but it was surprised that the number reached to 200 thousand. 

In early 2013, it predicted that the total number of Syrian refugees to neighboring countries would reach on June 2013 almost to one million. But it confirms today, on April, that the number reached one million and 300 thousand, and that it will reach to three and a half million at the end of the year. Lebanon’s share would be one million and 200 thousand, according to the estimate of Lebanon’s permanent representative to the United Nations Nawaf Salam. 

The potential “Battle of Greater Damascus”, would become a justification for tremendous human flow towards Lebanon in particular, and this would raises the number more and would be added to about half a million Syrian people who are residing in Lebanon with their families and working therein, as well as 400 thousand Palestinians, or half a million in and outside the camps. 

In sum, it seems realistic to talk about two and a quarter million Syrians and Palestinians in Lebanon with the end of the year, if the conflict in Syria continues to take place with its current pace, and probably the number would increase to more than 3 million if the pace escalated in Damascus. In both cases, the number of refugees would be more than half the number of the Lebanese residents. 

The true question that remains in the light of these facts, figures, and expectations, and away from the theories of the “brethrens” and “friends” is that: What will remain from Lebanon, if the conflict continues in Syria for years, and if the temporary refugees turned to become permanent ones, and what is the concept of being temporary and being permanent?