The Middle East's long history of displacement casts dark shadow on Gaza

Lebanese Christians in south Beirut

The Lebanese civil war did not spark a mass refugee crisis, but it did internally displace a quarter of the Lebanese population (around 1 million people). Almost half were unable to return home after the war ended in 1990, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, effectively making the displacement permanent.  

It also changed the demographic distribution of the country. During the battles in the Druze-majority Chouf mountains in the 1980s between Christian and Druze militias, thousands of Christians fled. In the mid-1990s, the Lebanese government announced plans to repatriate them, but not everyone returned.

The changes caused by displacement in the southern suburbs of Beirut were even more acute.

Before the war, it was a mixed area, home to Muslims and Christians. During the war, it was overrun by Lebanese and Palestinian militias, in addition to the Syrian army.

Israel's occupation of south Lebanon caused thousands of people from the area to flee north. Beirut's southern suburb was one of the main destinations for those internally displaced people from southern Lebanon, who happened to be mainly Shiite Muslims.

This combination of displacement and the rise of militias completely changed the face of Beirut's southern suburb, causing a strain on the area's Christian population. The rise of Hezbollah in the mid-1980s worsened the situation.

Hezbollah's 1985 charter outlined the group's rejection of the Lebanese state, instead calling for the establishment of an Islamic state. The Shiite population in the southern suburbs of Beirut gave the group the ideal conditions to take root.

Christian houses were attacked and taken over by force, and the group set about trying to change the lifestyle in the area to make it more "Islamic". It closed down shops selling alcohol and shot at houses playing loud music.

Nowadays, few Christians remain there. Even if those who fled came back, they would be returning to a very different place. The complete transformation of the area's social and political atmosphere is a major deterrent for them.

Syrian refugees and IDPs

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Syria has 6.8 million internally displaced people (IDPs). There are also 5.2 million refugees who left the country. 

The population of Syria before the war was around 21 million. Almost half of the Syrian population has been displaced.

Throughout the conflict, UNHCR registered only 500,000 returnees. Although actual numbers may be higher because people may return without being registered by the UNHCR, even a generous estimate remains a small proportion of the overall number of IDPs and refugees.

Vast destruction means that even if people want to return to their homes, their properties either no longer exist or have been taken over as part of a gentrification campaign in certain parts of the country championed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Areas around Damascus are being groomed as sites for luxury property projects that only the regime and its profiteers can benefit from. The original residents are being deliberately prevented from returning.

The al-Assad regime and its ally Hezbollah are engaged in what amounts to demographic engineering. 

In Syrian areas bordering Lebanon, Hezbollah orchestrated population swaps between villages, transferring Sunni residents out of some villages and replacing them with Shiite residents or emptying some villages of their residents and transforming those areas into military bases and centres for the manufacture and transfer of drugs.

The change caused by these actions makes these sites inaccessible to their original residents.   

Israel's far-right view of Gaza's future

Israeli far-right extremists are aiming for a scenario in Gaza that has echoes of what has happened in Lebanon and Syria: They want to use the war in Gaza to take over the land and make it difficult for them to stay.

Even if this attempt at population transfer fails, the outlook for Palestinians living there is grim. Reconstructing Gaza will be a lengthy and costly process, and the livelihoods of its residents have been significantly damaged.

When the fighting stops, the displaced people of Gaza will still be dealing with a huge economic loss. With farmland and livestock destroyed, they will face continued challenges to food security.

The damage to the health infrastructure discourages the return of civilians to areas without medical facilities.

With whole neighbourhoods razed, displaced Gazans are likely to end up in makeshift camps similar to those seen in Syria. Children will be left without school as their parents struggle to make a living. The consequences of this hardship on people's mental health are immense.

A war of a few months will result in years of devastation for the people of Gaza. The effects of the conflict will not stop when the fighting ends.

The worry is that the international community focuses on the military and political aspects of the war and does not dedicate adequate attention to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which will continue even after the guns fall silent.

The cases of Lebanon and Syria are a sobering reminder of the grave consequences of inaction.