In a peer-reviewed article about Palestinians’ access to the labour market in Lebanon published in 2022, academics Samih Eloubeidi and Prof. Tina Kempin wrote:
“Almost all of the participants spoke of the sectarian conflict and its impact on their integration, arguing that the primary reason for rejection and discrimination of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is the pre-existing sectarianism in the country. Participants were aware of the fact that their integration into Lebanese society would upset the balance, making Maronite and Shia Muslims further outnumbered. Many of the participants specifically focused on the Christian and Muslim divide. As one participant put it: ‘Christians in Lebanon do not want Palestinians to have access to jobs because they think if we have access to jobs, we will stay in Lebanon and throw off the balance of division’. He not only considered sectarianism as the main reason for Palestinian lack of integration and hateful rhetoric and discriminatory practices against them, but also noted the connection to employment restrictions. The Christian–Muslim divide plays a role not only in Lebanese society, but also within the Palestinian population. One participant mentioned that ‘Palestinian Christians, or most of them, are doing much better than we are’. As discussed above, Christian Palestinian refugees who arrived in the country were not only given citizenship, but were also highly encouraged to integrate into Lebanese society, again mostly to favour the Christian majorities in the political balance of power. Sectarianism has indeed contributed to the plight of the Palestinian refugees, creating inner-Palestinian divisions and directly affecting employment access and ability to integrate for Muslims.”
(Source: Samih Eloubeidi & Tina Kempin Reuter/ The International Journal of Human Rights, “Restricting access to employment as a human rights violation: a case study of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon”, Perceptions of restricted access to employment on integration, 11 April 2022, p. 15)
The liberal Arabic media network based in Beirut Raseef22 published an English translation of an article which quotes the internationally recognised researcher Jaber Suleiman:
In one of its articles “Jaber Suleiman, a Palestinian independent researcher in refugee studies, points out that “tens of thousands of Lebanese people who had been working in Palestine at the time were displaced along with the Palestinians, so the burden was a heavy one.”
Suleiman tells Raseef22 of the Lebanese government’s decision to set up refugee camps on the outskirts of cities and not in the countryside, in order to benefit from the skilled Palestinian labor, especially since a large number of refugees had skills that Lebanon needed, and some of them were well-off and had brought their money and gold with them.
Many sectors in Lebanon flourished with the arrival of the Palestinians, “especially banking, industry, agriculture, and the flow of trade.”
The Lebanese authorities granted citizenship to thousands of Christian Palestinians, according to Suleiman, in “clear sectarian discrimination”, while “special presidential decrees granted citizenship to wealthy and affluent refugees, regardless of their sect.””
(Source: Raseef22, “A fourth generation of Palestinians living in Lebanon “on the fringes of the law”, 6 December 2021)