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Lebanon and Palestine: incomplete ties
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- Last Updated on Thursday, 05 July 2012 16:38
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Fadi Abu Sada, Once again I would love to write raise what’s going on in my mind and the minds of many Palestinians living in the Palestinian territories in regard to Lebanon and its ties with Palestine and Palestinians especially since this country has more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees, and we all know the difficulties they face in Lebanon.
There are lots of details that disturb these ties and even showing them in an inappropriate appearance, especially for brothers who share a lot in history, presence and certainly future and we do not know what is delaying Lebanon from taking more decisions and speeding up the regulations to resolve the refugees’ problems.
There is an issue regarding Palestinians living in the Palestinian territories who like to visit Lebanon, although special cases are allowed to visit after long procedures that could take up to a month, Lebanon takes the blame especially after recognizing “the State of Palestine” and taking a formal decision from the Council of Ministers to establish relations with "Palestine", this means that there are a lot to do regarding the "visa" and visiting Lebanon but this has not happened yet.
Also Palestinians living in the Palestinian territories, who succeed in visiting Lebanon, find themselves disconnected from the world because the international roaming service is not available for Palestinian phone operators. As far as I know this was because of security reasons, but after removing it, the phone roaming are still inactive which make things extremely hard.
Regarding money transfer, those who live in Palestine can transfer money to Lebanon in every way, through banks, Western Union, even exchange shops and any other ways.
This is not the same the other way around, for it's almost impossible which delays people’s work and affect their lives and makes it unbearable nightmare.
These things may seem simple in comparison with other issues like Palestinian refugee camps, and Palestinian weaponry and many other complicated issues. We see that solving these issues could help to build more relations between the brother states even before Palestine get its independence yet , though we know the Lebanese point of view to the regarding the declaration of independence.
Lebanon has given much to Palestinians, for instance my father finished his bachelor’s degree there and he still talks about this country until now, and I waited for 25 years to visit Lebanon for the first time, since my father started talking to us his life, study and experience there. For us, visiting Lebanon was more than just visiting a new country, its Lebanon... and the rest is up to you.
We don't have but to wait, because we were raised on patience and nothing else, but we still have hope that Lebanon will start taking bold fast decisions to allow us to visit and work there. Because despite our history together, we feel a lot towards this country and its people, it’s an indescribable feeling of love to this country, its history and culture to learn from it, is that a far dream?
