The war on Lebanon has brought the crisis of crumbling and precarious buildings in Shatila Camp back into the spotlight. According to the head of the Popular Committee in the camp, nearly 70% of its residents fled during the first weeks of the Israeli assault on Beirut’s southern suburb. The displaced fled to different areas: some sought refuge with relatives in Wadi Al-Zina near Saida in the South or in the Beddawi and Nahr Al-Bared camps near Tripoli in the North, while others took shelter in the UNRWA-run Yabad School in Sabra.

Shatila Camp, established in 1949 in southern Beirut to house Palestinian refugees from Galilee and northern Palestine, is now home to an estimated 14,010 people, according to Lebanon’s 2017 population census. This figure includes Palestinians, displaced Syrians, and migrant workers from countries such as Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.

Assil lives with her husband and four children on the northern edge of Shatila Camp, adjacent to Beirut’s southern suburb and facing the Chiyah and Ghobeiry neighborhoods. The family resides in a deteriorating building with eroded walls and crumbling stones, especially with the repeated airstrikes targeting the southern suburb. “The cracks and fractures in our home’s walls have worsened since the beginning of the Israeli assault, and new fissures have appeared. The stairwell has also deteriorated, with stones falling from every side,” Assil explained. She describes an incident illustrating the danger of her life and her family’s: “I was sweeping the stairs as usual when Israel launched an airstrike on the southern suburb. The staircase shook beneath me, and a large stone fell from the ceiling near where I stood.”

The danger isn’t limited to the airstrikes on nearby Ghobeiry and Chiyah, sending shrapnel into the camp, as Assil’s husband confirmed, “Shrapnel reaches the neighborhood we live in.” Even relatively distant strikes cause the buildings to shake. “The house trembles as if it’s experiencing a strong earthquake!” Assil added.

After the initial powerful strikes, Assil and her family sought refuge in the Beddawi Camp, which became overcrowded with the massive influx of people fleeing the camps of Beirut and Tyre. They stayed for only 15 days before returning home. Assil attributed her decision to two reasons: “First, my eldest son stayed in Beirut; he couldn’t leave due to his work. He’s now the sole breadwinner for the family, and leaving his job wasn’t an option. Second, I couldn’t bear to stay away from my home and my camp. Displacement is hard. My life is here in Shatila Camp. This is my home and my community, despite the daily dangers and the looming threat of the building collapsing at any moment due to its poor condition.”

The family’s decision to leave, beyond the building’s worsening condition, was influenced by their youngest son, a ten-year-old who kept asking at the start of the war, “What is war?” Assil’s husband said: “Our son soon found his answer” with intensifying airstrikes, deafening explosions, trembling homes, and the daily fear gripping camp residents. Assil added, “My husband decided we should leave because he feared for our child. We didn’t want him to feel terrified or unsafe in his own home… But this is our home, and we had to come back.”

The fear of leaving home is a persistent struggle for Palestinian refugees since the Nakba in 1948. They strive to create a sense of stability and security for their families by striving to own homes within the cramped confines of camps – miniature homelands, with alleyways and neighborhoods named after Palestinian cities and villages to remind them of their roots. This nostalgia drives refugees in Lebanon, their host country, to shape a temporary homeland within the camps, imperfect as it may be, until their return. Leaving the camp, even under harsh circumstances, remains a painful choice, and they inevitably return as soon as they can.

When airstrikes target Beirut’s southern suburb, camp residents still in their homes prepare to temporarily flee to the nearby Tariq El-Jdideh area to ensure their safety in case the airstrikes intensify, only to return once the situation calms down. Despite her growing fears and the widening cracks in her home’s walls, Assil noted, “At first, I would leave the camp whenever the strikes intensified. But since returning from Beddawi, I haven’t left my home at all.”

The crisis of crumbling buildings and the residents’ dates back many years, resurfacing every winter when the risk of collapse worsens due to the weather, causing renewed suffering and fear for camp residents. The crisis has escalated following the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria and the aftershocks that Lebanon witnessed in February 2023, which further weakened already fragile structures in Lebanon, leaving them on the verge of collapse.

Buildings, or parts of them, occasionally crumble in the camp, as happened last September when a staircase in a Shatila building collapsed. According to UNRWA spokesperson Huda Samra, statistics indicate that 5,500 homes in camps across Lebanon are at risk of collapse. She attributed the delay in addressing the issue to a lack of funding, as such projects rely on donor countries rather than the agency’s general budget.

“We, along with other residents, have repeatedly asked UNRWA to repair our homes, but our pleas have gone unanswered,” Assil said. “They haven’t even visited or inspected the building we live in – not before, and not now.”

Caught between Israel’s assault and UNRWA’s neglect or limited capacity, Palestinians continue to suffer from Israeli aggression even in their countries of refuge and their struggling camps in Lebanon. Even 75 years after Shatila Camp was established, Israeli airstrikes continue to endanger their lives and compromise their children’s well-being in buildings that continue to crumble day after day.