Nahr al-Bared (, literally: Cold River) is a

Palestinian refugee camp Palestinian refugee camps were first established to accommodate Palestinians who were displaced by the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight during the 1948 Palestine war. Camps were established by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UN ...

in northern

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

, 16 km from the city of

Tripoli Tripoli or Tripolis (from , meaning "three cities") may refer to: Places Greece *Tripolis (region of Arcadia), a district in ancient Arcadia, Greece * Tripolis (Larisaia), an ancient Greek city in the Pelasgiotis district, Thessaly, near Larissa ...

. Some 30,000 displaced Palestinians and their descendants live in and around the camp, which was named after the river that runs south of the camp. Under the terms of the 1969 Cairo Agreement, the

Lebanese Army The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF; ), also known as the Lebanese Army (), is the national military of the Republic of Lebanon. It consists of three branches, the ground forces, the air force, and the navy. The motto of the Lebanese Armed Forces is ...

does not conventionally enter the Palestinian camps, and internal security is provided by Palestinian factions.

Overview

Nahr al-Bared is located directly on the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

. It is made up of the "official" or "old" camp and the "unofficial" or "new" camp. The "old" camp is roughly 0.2 km² and is under the responsibility of

UNRWA The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA, pronounced ) is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA's mandate encompasses Palestinians who fl ...

. The "new" camp extends mainly to the north of the old camp, but also to lesser degrees to the east and south. It is less densely populated and many wealthier families have built their homes there in recent years. The camp is oblong shaped with the main road running straight through it (South to North), and the Souq running east to west. The different sectors of the camp are named after areas of what is now the northern

Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...

region : Safourieh, Sasa, Safad, etc. Other sectors are more commonly known by the origins of the families living there: e.g. the "Maghrebi" area where families originally from

Maghreb The Maghreb (; ), also known as the Arab Maghreb () and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb al ...

History

Ancient history

North to the river Nahr al-Bared was located the ancient Phoenician city

Orthosia ''Orthosia'' is a genus of moths of the family Noctuidae erected by Ferdinand Ochsenheimer in 1816. As with the genus '' Egira'', moths in this genus are sometimes called early spring millers, as adults are on wing in winter and early spring. S ...

Establishment as refugee camp

The camp was established in December 1949 by the

League of Red Cross Societies The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is a worldwide humanitarian aid organization that reaches 160 million people each year through its 191 member National Societies. It acts before, during and after disast ...

in order to accommodate the Palestinian refugees displaced by the

1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight In the 1948 Palestine war, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of Mandatory Palestine's predominantly Arab population – fled from their homes or were expelled. Expulsions and attacks against Palestinians were carried out by the ...

which occurred during the

1948 Palestine war The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the Stat ...

. The camp was established outside any major Lebanese towns or settlements, which left Nahr al-Bared more isolated from the Lebanese society than many of the other

camps in Lebanon Palestinian refugee camps were first established to accommodate Palestinians who were displaced by the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight during the 1948 Palestine war. Camps were established by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNR ...

. Despite this, due to its position on the main road to

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

and its proximity to the Syrian border, Nahr al-Bared grew to be a central commercial hub for the local Lebanese of the Akkar region.

First fifty years

On 6 May 1979 an

Israeli Air Force The Israeli Air Force (IAF; , commonly known as , ''Kheil HaAvir'', "Air Corps") operates as the aerial and space warfare branch of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It was founded on May 28, 1948, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Indep ...

air strike killed four people and wounded twenty-five. An Israeli statement claimed the target was a

PFLP The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP; ) is a secular Palestinian Marxist–Leninist organization founded in 1967 by George Habash. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation ...

stronghold.

Radio Lebanon Radio Lebanon (better known by the official French term Radio Liban or , pronounced Iza'at Lubnan) is one of the pioneering and one of the oldest Arab radio stations. F1000016

Nahr al Bared street celebration in 2005

Late in the night of Saturday May 19, 2007, a building was surrounded by Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) in which a group of

Fatah al-Islam Fatah al-Islam () is a Sunni Islamist militant group established in November 2006 in a Palestinian refugee camp, located in Lebanon. It has been described as a militant jihadistLe Figaro (16 April 2007)"Fatah Al-Islam: the new terrorist threat ...

militants accused of taking part in a bank robbery earlier that day were hiding. The ISF attacked the building early on Sunday May 20, 2007, unleashing a day-long battle between the ISF and Fatah al-Islam militants on 200 Street, Tripoli. As a response, members of Fatah al-Islam in Nahr al-Bared Camp (16 km from Tripoli) attacked an army checkpoint, killing several soldiers in their sleep. The army immediately responded by shelling the camp. The camp became the centre of the fighting between the

and Fatah al-Islam. It sustained heavy shelling while under siege. Most of the inhabitants fled to the nearby Beddawi Palestinian refugee camp (doubling that camps population) or further south to Tripoli, Beirut and Saida. The last civilians (25 women and 38 children, the families of Fatah al-Islam members) were evacuated from the camp on Friday August 24, 2007. The conflict between the

and Fatah al-Islam ended on Sunday September 2, 2007 with the Lebanese Army taking full control of the camp after eliminating the remaining terrorist pockets. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, charged with the care of the Palestinians, struggled to contain the unprecedented humanitarian crisis. In the meantime, most of the displaced refugees waited in improvised shelters in Beddawi camp and elsewhere for a sustainable solution to arrive. Nahr al-Bared was also home to the largest market in northern Lebanon; many Lebanese relied on the tax-free goods and black market prices to keep the cost of living down in a country with current inflation at 5.6%. The demise of Nahr al-Bared was a devastating blow to the local economy. The failure of the international community, and Arab states in particular, to fund an emergency humanitarian appeal for Nahr al-Bared means life for refugees living there is set to get harder.

References

External links

Lebanese struggle with broken economy, Don Duncan, The San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 2008
{{Authority control Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon Populated places established in 1949