Palestinians arrested while attempting to reach Italy

BEIRUT: Nearly a hundred Palestinians, most of whom were refugees from Syria, were arrested by Lebanese authorities while attempting to travel illegally to Italy, police and a Lebanon-based Palestinian official said.

The Internal Security Forces said it had arrested 108 individuals – 99 Palestinians, eight Lebanese and one Syrian – near the Tripoli port area while they were attempting to leave the country by boat. The migrants included 26 children and 10 women.

The ISF said the individuals were being smuggled from the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp to Tripoli and from there to Italy. The police said they had also arrested a Lebanese man who was part of the gang attempting to smuggle the families.

A Palestinian official told The Daily Star the majority of the migrants were Palestinian refugees from Syria attempting to flee tough conditions in Lebanon. He said one man had sold one of his kidneys in order to finance his ticket out. The official said the families were being held in the Tripoli Serail and interrogated about the smuggling ring.

There are roughly 44,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria in Lebanon, many of whom fled the siege of the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus in late 2012. The figure is down from a peak of over 80,000, as families have returned to Syria or been smuggled out of the country to Europe or other nations on the Mediterranean. Many have died while making the journey.

Some have also managed to secure visas to European countries that accept refugees from Syria.

In Lebanon, Palestinians from Syria are especially vulnerable, facing even more restrictions in their access to work than do most Palestinian refugees, who are barred from many professions and cannot own land.

They also face resentment from some in the Palestinian refugee camps, who find their neighborhoods overcrowded because of the influx of refugees from Yarmouk. The camps themselves have never been enlarged since the 1950s. Officials say they face exploitation by employers who can easily cheat them because of their refugee status.