An Eternal Limbo for Refugees

Located within a square kilometre of southern Beirut, the Shatila refugee camp was set up in 1949 as a temporary home for just a few hundred Palestinian families made homeless by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is now home to about 12,000 refugees.

Its narrow walkways weave an irregular pattern through sagging blocks of apartments packed so tightly that littlelight can penetrate indoors. My guide for the afternoon is Dima Abed al-Razik, 17, a third-generation refugee who, like her parents, has never set foot in the land she still calls Palestine, but is now Israel.