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Name of student: Basma El Boussaki

Student number: 16043986

Module number: U30099

Module name: Dissertation

Module leader: Francesco Proto

Resistance in spaces of exception: Exploring the extent to which Agamben's concept of 'bare-life' exists in Palestinian refugee camps
Title of work:
in Lebanon
Date of submission: 23/01/19 Time of submission: 12:00

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RESISTANCE IN SPACES OF EXCEPTION 1
Exploring the extent to which Agamben's concept of 'bare-life' exists in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon

Basma El Boussaki 16043986

 A dissertation presented to the School of Architecture,
Oxford Brookes University in part fulfilment of the regulations
for BA (Hons) in Architecture

Acknowledgements

I am sincerely thankful for my dissertation tutor

Professor Cathrine Brun for her time, encouragement and
commitment throughout my research
Statement of Originality

This dissertation is an original piece of work which is made

available for copying with permis­ sion of the Head of the
School of Architecture

Signed,

Basma El Boussaki

2 3
 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................7

‘Al-Nakba’ and Lebanon, The Host Country .............................................................................................................................................................................................................11

‘The Liquid Camp’: expansion beyond the the ‘Misery Belt’................................................................................................................................................................................18

RESISTANCE IN SPACES OF EXCEPTION Producing place and Spatialising identity .................................................................................................................................................................................................................24

Exploring the extent to which Agamben's concept of 'bare-life' exists in
Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon
Basma El Boussaki 16043986
Urbicide and Resistance.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................36
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................46
Bibliography............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................48

Figure References...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................50

4 5
 This dissertation aims to merge my activism towards the struggle of
Palestinian refugees with my exploration of how spaces of exception
can evoke resistance and develop a political agency. I will be
exploring how a refugee camp is defined and observed through the
lens of the host country, humanitarian organisations, architects and
the refugees themselves to conclude whether refugees are truly
stripped from their values, memories and identity when forcibly exiled
from their homes.
Refugee condition and spaces in the past have been analysed and
observed through Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben’s observation
of “bare life” and refugee camps by political geographers, anthro-
pologists and architects, to name a few (Martin, 2015, p.9). However,
recently there has been escalating critique of Agamben’s totalitarian
camp studies as it does not seem to mirror the conditions of refu-
gee camps in this current time. Agamben expressed that a camp is “a
space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become
the rule and gains a permanent spatial form” thus rendering the
inhabitants to suffer “bare-life” whereby they are stripped off their
identity, independence and all rights that would be granted to one
residing outside a space of exception (Agamben, 1998, p.37).
Dating back since the late 1940s, Palestinian refugee camps in
Lebanon are a credible model to challenge this view. Previous stud-
ies on the camps (Hanafi and Long, 2010; Knudsen, 2016; Martin, 2013;
Sanyal 2014; Maqusi, 2017), have shown that despite a supposed
authority of a single sovereign power there are “complex power
struggles” between various parties from host governments to hu-
manitarian agencies such as the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), NGOs and also refugees
themselves whom personalise, organise and “contest” the camp
(Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska, 2017, p.161). The following chapters will
be a collective case study on three refugee camps in Lebanon, used
to examine how the refugee’s response and interaction within these
spaces of exception leads us to question the validity of Agambens
identification of a refugee camp.
Through undertaking a constructivist approach, my challenge to Ag-
ambens claims would be “built upon the premise of a social construc-
tion of reality” (Searle, 1995 cited in Baxter and Jack, 2008) as unlike
Agambens direction of analysis I would take a more personal and less
statistical path towards understanding the refugees actions when
isolated within a space of exception.
To do this, I will largely turn to secondary material from Julie Pe-
teet’s conversations with Palestinian refugees across the region
(2006), Adam Ramadan’s interviews with the inhabitants of Nahr El
Bared (2009) and stories from refugees in Shatila recounted by Diana
Map of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon - Refugee camps I will be focusing on circled in red (El Boussaki, 2018)
6 7
Martin (2015) just to name a few. To analyse refugee’s conditions
and thought process behind their response to their settlement in the
exception it is of high importance to refer to the testimonies of the
refugees themselves.
The following three case studies are linked by the refugees shared
response to their treatment in a land that is alien to them and is
confined in to ensure their alienation. Regardless of whether the
camp is specifically located in the suburbs or embedded within the
city or emerging from a state of destruction, refugees still have the
capacity and strength to resist directly or indirectly whether through
constructing spatial violations, the camp merging with the urban fab-
ric of the city or the establishment of an informal economy. The use
of case studies throughout the course of my dissertation will enable
me to develop a form of qualitative research and allow me to ques-
tion the rationality of Agambens view of the camp through exploring
various refugee conditions in dissimilar contexts since the “truth is
relative and dependent on one’s perspective” (Baxter and Jack, 2008,
p.545).
The first chapter will briefly outline the events that led to the
expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland and how they
assimilated into their new identity as refugees settled in Lebanon, a
host country that merely evokes hostility towards the refugees and
ensures the camp embodies a transient character due to the coun-
try’s fragile political background.
In the second chapter, I will examine how the Shatila refugee camp
also known as the “Liquid Camp” in southern Beirut initially secluded
during the time of its formation has now began to form out from its
boundaries and converge into the realm of the city. The camp which
has largely become a site that is “no longer inhabited by refugees
exclusively” since “the camp welcomes the multiple outcasts of the
Lebanese neoliberal and sectarian system” (Martin,2015, p.16) thus
contradicting the Agambenian understanding that camps are an open
prison exclusively for refugees (Agamben, 1998).
In criticism to Agamben’s totalitarian observation of refugee camps I
will turn to urban anthropologist Michel Agier (2011) whom strives to
broaden and alter the way we think of ghettos, looking beyond its
most recognisable forms such as the French Banlieus. Agier argues
that camps like Shatila can be described as “Heterotopian”; according
to Foucault (1984, p.752) Heterotopias are “outside of all places even
though it is possible to indicate their location”. Through the eyes
of Agier, Palestinian refugee camps are a convincing existing model
of how there is a “slow but inevitable” progression from a delicate,
fragile temporary encampment to the modern day political and urban
ghetto or enclave (Agier, 2012).
 The third chapter will be an in depth morphological study of Shatila’s
neighbouring refugee camp, Burj Al Barajneh in order to explore how
Palestinian refugees transform a space that is designed to not be
permanent and intends to strip their basic human rights into a home
spatially organised to reproduce the home they left behind and to
which they are organising to return (Peteet,2006, p.107). This
transformation is incurred by a series of spatial violations (Maqu-
si, 2017) which expresses an act of political instrumentalisation and
evokes a message of resistance.
This will be investigated through evidence gathered by Architect and
Urban specialist Samar Maqusi’s article “Spatial Violations: beyond
relief inside the Palestine refugee camps” (2017) which presents
images and diagrams of Burj Al Barajneh since its period of assembly
to its existing form. With this, I will intend to delve into the pro-
gression by which the camp is transformed from sacred to profane
and how in fact it is the refugees themselves that exercise this and
therefore one cannot perceive refugees through the Agambenian lens
as the Homo Sacer, when inhabiting a space of exception.

The final chapter will examine Nahr El Bared, a refugee camp in

Northern Lebanon which had suffered a case of urbicide and an
absence of law and governance thus leaning towards the Agambe-
nian definition of a refugee camp as its inhabitants at this period
of Urbicide developed a helpless character that is denied all rights.
However, this case study is used to refute Agambens claims that
resistance is futile within a space of exception (Agamben, 1998); with
support from the international community, the refugee’s ability to
regain a political agency and return to the camp was made probable.
To further defend this view, I will turn to a secondary case study
of a refugee camp which also underwent similar circumstances. Ayn
El Hilweh, located in the Sidon district of Lebanon, heavily suffered
from the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The Kingdom of Women:
Ein El Hilweh (2010) documentary outlines how the refugees asserted
and guided the reconstruction of the camp and how the women of the
camp developed to become political actors of the camp.

A boy runs through one of the camps streets with it´s tangled water pipes and electricity cables" (Bobst,2017) *

* Page number not given since image is an internet source 8 9

 This chapter will outline the events that lead to the displacement surely as the loss of Palestine” (ibid.).
of Palestinian refugees and their settlement in the refugee camps Approximately 700,000 Palestinians took refuge in the bordering 2 NOV. 1917
of Lebanon and how the host country’s political background coincides countries of Palestine, the rest however (about 150,000) remained
with the refugee’s way of living. and applied for Israeli citizenship (Khalidi, 1992, p.581). In 1949, BALFOUR
DECLARATION ISSUED 1917
Lebanon is home to various forms of refuge “ranging from the formal around 100,000 refugees in Lebanon gradually moved into twelve
(camps) to the informal (gatherings) and irregular (squatters)” (Knud- camps set up by UNRWA (Fig.1); (Peteet, 2006). UNRWA which stands “600,000 Palestinians
and 55,000 Jews
sen, 2016, p.443). Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are a “state for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees lived in Palestine”
in making”, yet Palestinians have a strong inclination to return to was established by General Assembly resolution 302 (IV), with the (AMP,2009)
their homeland if possible in the future after forcibly exiled during initial mandate to provide “direct relief and works programmes” to
Al-Nakba. Al-Nakba was the genesis of the “dismemberment and Palestinian refugees, in order to “prevent conditions of starvation 1918
de-Arabisation of historic Palestine”(Masalha, 2012, p.2) when “some and distress…and to further conditions of peace and stability”(UNR-
600,000-760,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees and have re- WA,2018). OCCUPATION OF
PALESTINE BY BRIT-
mained refugees in the immediate post-war period”(Morris, 1989, p.27). AIN AFTER WORLD
The initiation to the displacement of refugees across the Middle East The Lebanese authority leased land to the UN, and in order to build WAR ONE
1920
and beyond began when Palestine fell under a British Mandate fol- camps for the refugees some land were rented or bought from
lowing the end of the First World War. In 1917, the British govern- the landowners at the time. Lebanon hosts the largest whereby FORMATION
OF THE BRITISH
ment submitted the Balfour Declaration which intended to establish currently there are “449,957 registered Palestinian refugees and MANDATE OF
a “National Home for the Jewish People” in Palestine, whilst inden- represent an estimated ten per cent of the population of Lebanon” PALESTINE
tifying the Palestinian population as as the “non-Jewish community” (UNRWA, 2018) but also not to mention there are now 951,629 Regis-
(Morris, 1989). The UN succumbed to this objective and imposed a plan tered Syrian Refugees in Lebanon (UNHCR, 2018) due to the endless
to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states (fig.3). In November civil war in Syria which initiated in 2011. 29 NOV. 1947
1947 there was a vote in favour of the Partition.
PARTITION PLAN
Inevitably this decision erupted a war for Palestine, the Palestinian Lebanon is a “fragile multiconfessional state where political rep- APPROVED BY UN
and Arab forces were defeated and so the land of Palestine fell resentation and the distribution of resources are appropriated by
into the Jewish states hands which led to the “expulsion or flight of sect”(Peteet, 2006,p.20). Maronite Christians, the most prominent
between 714,150 and 780,000 Palestinians” (Khalidi, 1992, p.582). The sect, have long held the reins of political and economic power in
Jewish state was declared on May 1948 that “eventually encompassed Lebanon, however since the arrival of the large Sunni Muslim ref-
the area allotted to the Jews in the Partition Plan as well as large ugee population of Palestinian refugees there has been a fear
15 MAY 1948
portions allotted to the Palestinians” (Peteet, 2006). Being lodged on within the Maronite sect that a sectarian imbalance would ensue and
the upper hand, had sparked a colonial impulse within the region, de- therefore the refugees were seen as a “threat to the country’s BRITISH MANDATE
spite other areas of the world undergoing decolonisation and national delicate political order and stability” (Haddad, 2000, p.30). This then ENDS
independence (Morris, 1989). justified the Lebanese government to uphold laws that Palestinian CREATION OF ISRAEL
1948 was the year of the Palestinian Nakba, the exile and ethnic refugees in Lebanon also have very limited access to social services
cleansing of Palestinian refugees from their homeland which has (including health) and education and rendered Palestinian refugees
invoked the birth of the state of Israel. The Nakba initiated the to fail to obtain basic civil rights such as having restricted access
dispersal and disintegration of the Palestinian people whereby bor- to the job market since they cannot work in as many as 20 profes-
ders were rooted into the ground to force Palestinians who remained sions (UNRWA, 2018). JAN 1949
in to stay put but also force Palestinians out in order to secure the
establishment of the state of Israel. Despite the physical dispersion “More than 750,000
of the Palestinian people this shared memory of 1948 “brought the Palestinians are forced
from their homes and
Palestinians closer together in terms of their collective political con- 531 villages have been
sciousness” (Dajani, 2005, p.42-3, cited from Masalha, 2012, p.9) and depopulated.”(AMP,2009)
influenced their lives within the camps they still reside in to this day
as “it seems clear that nothing forged in Palestinian identity so
UN Partition plan, 29th November 1947 (UNISPAL, 1947).

10 11
Palestinians leaving their villages during the Nakba (Bettmann,1948). Palestinan woman and child fleeing from villages nearby Jericho (UNRWA Photo Archives, 1967)

12 13
 Refugee camps are universally defined as “segregated spaces” and
that their “size, location and spatial layout are dictated by security
considerations” in the case for refugee camps in Lebanon most camps
were purposely located at a “distance from urban centres and under
strict control by the internal security services”(Peteet,2006) called
the Deuxieme Bureau.
However how is a refugee camp defined when refugee population
increases, and the camps begin to merge with the city that envelopes
it? Could they then enjoy the deserved rights and services they
have initially been stripped of by the Lebanese authorities? Agam-
bens perception of “The spatialisation of exclusion” (Martin,2015, p.10)
can be challenged by the fact that refugees can etch the landscape
they live in and their social relations and practices shape the camps
physical and social environment, distinguishing it from the exterior,
and thus imposes symbolic meaning (Peteet, 2006). This will further
emphasise how camps “may become the genesis of unexpected cities,
new social environment, relationships and identification” (Agier,2002
cited in Doraï, 2010, p.74) and despite being held under oppressive
laws by their host country refugees can still gain and maintain
autonomy.
Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon is a clear case study that
demonstrates that refugees themselves can redefine the camps they
are enclosed in and soften the physical and symbolic boundaries that
divide refugees and nationals.
Located in southern Beirut, Shatila was originally set-up for Pales-
tinian refugees in 1949. However in the 1920s, before its formation,
Armenians sought refuge in camps in Lebanon. Palestinian refugee
camps developed to become slums much prior to the Nakba, the ex-
pulsion of Palestinians from their homeland:
“In 1922, the arrival, of 10,500 Armenians to Beirut fleeing Cilicia
(where the threat of massacres was intensifying) marks the forma-
tion of the first slum in Modern Beirut.” (Fawaz and Peillen, 2003,
p.9).
The Armenian camps at the time were perceived as “constituted
points of attraction for those in need and search for better oppor-
tunities”(Martin, 2015, p.15). Shatila also carries this characteristic as
now “it is estimated that half of the 12,235 inhabitants of Shatila
are non-Palestinians, mainly Syrian refugees that are fleeing from
the on-going civil war and lower-class Lebanese citizens that cannot
afford to live in neighbourhoods in the capital” (UNRWA, 2018).
In 1969, an agreement took place known as the Cairo Accords in which
the Lebanese government authorised the Palestinians to “self admin-
ister the camp” (Martin, 2015), new settlers both Lebanese and Pal-
estinians began to occupy areas surrounding Shatila. Although under
Shatila Refugee Camp (Google Earth, 2018)
14
Lebanese law expansions of refugee camps are illegal, “the quar-
ters of Sabra and Hay Gharbeh, respectively north and west of the
camp, became natural extensions of Shatila” (Clerc-Huybrechts, 2008
cited from Martin, 2015, p.13).
The Cairo Accords granted Palestinians to gain autonomy as it al-
lowed Palestinians to have the right to employment, residence and
movement, the formation of local communities (Sayigh,1997) as well
as the “establishment of posts of the Palestinian Armed Strug-
gle (PASC) inside the camp” (Brynen,1990). The resistance movement
were admitted control of the camps in Lebanon and provided refu-
gees with a multitude of health and social services as well as en-
suring security within the camps. Unfortunately, these benefits were
short-lived when allegations of “a state within a state” appeared
and thus evoked animosity from some districts of the Lebanese
polity (Peteet, 2006).
A fifteen-year period civil war occurred between 1975-1990, Israel
invaded Lebanon, besieged, and ultimately entered Beirut and carried
out a massacre at Sabra-Shatila refugee camps which resulted in
2,750 Palestinians and Lebanese nationals murdered in three days
(Fawaz and Peillen,2003, p.12). 1982 was the year “Palestinian au-
tonomy and institution-building came to an abrupt and dramatic end”
(Peteet, 2006,p.18) due to the removal of the PLO’s forces and per-
sonnel from Lebanon. Palestinian refugees once again suffered from
confinement and marginalisation by the Lebanese government. Julie
Peteet (2006, p.22) recounts that at her first visit in 1970 Shatila
“had a vibrant infrastructure of social services and facilities such
as clinics, vocational training centres, workshops, childcare facilities,
clubs, and resistance offices.” However by 1992 “it was a virtual
wasteland.”
Palestinian refugees felt bereft and “strangled” by this overbear-
ing sense of containment orchestrated by the Lebanese government
making them believe that the Lebanese authorities were implement-
ing a plan to compel them to leave by making life miserable (Peteet,
2006).
“All these restrictions on jobs and rebuilding the camps-they think
we will leave if our lives become unbearable” (Abu Khalid, Interview
by Julie Peteet, 2006).
The abandonment of the camp by the Lebanese authorities after
the establishment of the Cairo Accords stimulated motion as Pal-
estinians began settling outside the camp, but also change as this
occurrence subsequently rendered Shatila to become “a multi-ethnic
slum and contested war memorial with high emigration rates”
15
 "Palestinian woman, holds out helmets found in the Sabra-Chatilla camp after massacre, telling
reporters these were worn by the killers." (Foley, 1982)

16 17
 CHAPTER 2:
(Knudsen,2016, p.453); a place where fugitives in need to escape from
the state’s jurisdiction and a sanctuary to settle in for those who
cannot afford to live elsewhere (Martin, 2015). This reflects how the
French banlieues took shape and inhabited by the “human waste”
(Bauman, 2004) of the French system; a “place of banishment
(ban-lieu) is socialized or urbanized in the process of globalization”
(Agier, 2011, p.286). Banlieue, the French word for the term “slum”
increases mobility between
camp and surrounding informal settlements and in Agambenian terms the “inclusive exclusion” is a “place formed
that is attached to the centre yet abandoned by it”(Martin, 2015,
p.15). However, as French anthropologist Michel Agier (2011, p.45) ex-
presses one cannot disregard the social and cultural activity that is
cultivated within the walls of the place of confinement which is what
is being overlooked within the grounds of Agamben’s understanding
of the camp.
Through understanding the camp in relation to the city rather than
apart from it, one can comprehend Shalita’s transition from a space
of exception to the slum beyond the Agambenian reasoning of per-
ceiving a camp as a way to “define the modern nation-state and law”
(Schiocchet, 2014). Agier’s observation of camps facilitates this con-
temporary and less impersonal discovery of refugee camps of today
in which he analysed the camp on three accounts through the lens
of how one would interrogate the functionality of a city: “the pro-
duction and reproduction of spatial symbolics, the outlining of social
stratification and the construction/negotiation of identities”(Bauman,
2002,p.344). Agier expresses that refugee camps in dense urban
areas such as Shatila are not the manifestation of bare life such
as the extremely poor urban enclaves of the Brazilian favelas since
they have closely become part of the urban landscape (Schiocchet,
2014).
Surrounding Shatila there are informal settlements that share similar
physical characteristics to the camp which further elaborates how
the line between camp and city are indistinguishable thus suggest-
ing Shatila’s reidentification as a new slum. The fluidity of the camp
and its amalgamation with the city is mirrored in the shared stan-
Entrance/Exit
dard of living of the households that surround it. Both the camp and
Major Low neighbouring settlements suffer from extreme overcrowding, lack of
Souk/Marketplace educational services, low income, and wealth (UN-Habitat and UNDP,
Main internal paths 2010). One would not consider being better-off living in these Leba-
Boundary
nese settlements in comparison to the camp.
The urban fabric of Shatila itself also further encouraged an in-
The seamless boundaries and paths of Shatila Refugee Camp crease of the camp’s population since it opens itself out to the
(adapted by author from Hagla,2009,p.8) capital city and has multiple access points as “boundaries are rep-
resented by streets that are wider than the narrow alleys within
it”(Martin, 2015, p.14). The lack of control and restriction of the camp
18
from the sovereign power tests the boundaries of Agamben’s un-
derstanding of the camp, a space in which “refugees can be seen
as the ultimate “biopolitical” subjects: those who can be regulated
and governed at the level of population in a permanent “state of
exception” outside the normal legal framework- The camp” (Owens,
2009, p.568).This “leaking out” (Bauman, 2000; 2002) of Shatila over
onto the capital city’s urban fabric transforms ones perception of
refugee camps and negates the belief that camps exist to mere-
ly remain stagnant on creating “bare life” rather than evolving to
become a positive space in potentiality (Agamben, 1999).
Julie Peteet expresses in her recount of Shatila that the borders
of Shatila had only become evident to her in the early 1990s . The
boundaries were incredibly “fluid” that Peteet would rely on the in-
habitants to direct her to where they were (Peteet, 2006, p.137). As
shown in Fig.8 the exposed boundary around Shatila is so open that
multiple exits and entrances form.
This fluid sense of the camps start and end lead to “a virtual ex-
tension of the space of the camp” (Al Husseini, 2012 cited in Martin,
2015, p.15). Despite being marginalised refugees can develop ties with
their urban environment; they are part of the urban settings that
host them (Doraï, 2010).
Prominent French philosopher, Michel Foucault would term these
spatialities as Heterotopias (Boano and Talocci, 2014), the “kind of
places that are outside all places even though they are actually
localisable”(Foucault, 1986, p.17).The boundaries that confine Shatila
loosen due to constant daily mobility crossing these thresholds as
the presence of the market place on the north of the camp (Fig.8)
encouraged “urban practices” of shopping and the visiting of fam-
ilies and friends. This lead to refugees developing ties with Leba-
nese civilians in the surrounding settlements; it would be of great
difficulty to visibly differentiate between the two (Doraï, 2010). The
camps therefore become a space that “always presupposes a sys-
tem of opening and closing that both isolates them and make them
penetrable” due to the existence of a congregational space and the
frequent passage of various communities (Foucault, 1986, p.21; Boano
and Talocci, 2014).
Despite the camp being “decided” by the sovereign, those who in-
habit the “space in which the alien is intentionally kept far from the
national body”(Martin, 2015, p.14) can, in fact, toy and exploit the
exceptionality of the camp and eventually redefine it as their own.
Members of a single family prior to the civil war would inhabit an
entire building while now the organisation of the housing structure
is changing continually. Regardless of the restrictions set by the
19

increases mobility between
camp and surrounding informal settlements
"Pigeons fly over the roofs of the provisionally erected houses, which are now up to 10 storeys high." (Bobst, 2017)
CHAPTER 2:
Lebanese government on expanding the refugee camp, there is a
“widespread violation of building and construction codes” (Fawaz and
Peillen, 2002, p.7). The camp would develop vertically as residents
would construct upwards by converting the roof of the top flat to
a floor of a new house to the extent that they reach as “high as
seven storeys and lean ever closer to each other, blocking out the
sun”(Cornish, 2018).
These new constructions are then seen as a source of income for
Palestinian refugees due to the large influx of Syrian refugees
settling in the camp. Despite being confined within the camp’s bound-
aries the refugees develop their own informal economy. A new inhab-
itant of the camp interested in building a home would need to “seek
approval from the owner of the top flat whose permission costs
between 2000 and 3000 US dollars” (Martin’s interview with Salah,
November 2008, p.14)
This therefore supports the view that Shatila has developed to be-
come “a space in abjection to the Agambenian understanding” (Martin,
2015,p.14) that we can no longer describe Palestinian refugees as the
“Homo sacer” - “an outcast, one whom it was pollution to associate,
who dared to take no part in any of the institutions of the state”
(David Bleeden, 2010, p.77). Camps like Shatila are rather a place that
is formed to be the genesis of an “identity strategy”(Agier, 2011,
p.284) rather than the stripping of one’s identity.
Refugees themselves gain autonomy and use their creativity to find
cost-effective methods to accommodate new residents at the camp.
This developed independence of the refugees renders them to gener-
ate “productive spaces in evolution, where new forms of governance
can be experimented” (Hanafi, 2010 cited in Martin, 2015, p.16). The
permanency of the encampment eventually becomes more reinforced
through the illegal use of solid materials, such as concrete to enable
these vertical expansions, thus threatening the temporary charac-
ter of refugee camps which the state intends to retain but are now
grasping at straws.
Agier’s main driving question behind his subsequent anthropology of
refugeeness makes us question: “Can the refugee camp become a city
in the sense of a space of urban sociability, an urbs, and indeed in
the sense of a political space, a polis?” (Agier, 2002, p.322). We could
answer that they most probably can, and this transformation can de-
velop much faster with support from agencies outside the Lebanese
sectarian system.
Shatila’s process of “ghettoization” (Agier,2011, p.285); evolving from
a place of exception to an “informal ghetto” due to the hostility
from the state helped provide the camp official recognition and sup-
port from the international community and various organisations.
This emphasises the fact that refugee camps such as Shatila do
not come under the description of the exception being tied and
controlled by the legal system since the inhabitants are “legally
excluded from the state’s protection” (Martin, 2015, p.16). This gives
international housing aid charities such as Habitat for Humanity an
increased incentive to encourage empowerment and autonomy within
the refugee community.
Habitat for Humanity aims to make “basic accommodation more
homely” (Cornish, 2018) and due to the absence of the government
they also attempt provide safety in the camp. In Shatila, refugees
live in constant risk of electrocution due to large quantities of live
electric wires overhead dripping with water and slipping downwards
when they get too heavy (ibid.). Habitat for Humanity alleviates the
issue simply by separating “wires from pipes, installing trays to
keep them apart” which allows more light to seep into the dense
encampment (ibid.). The presence of services provided from organisa-
tions such as these also facilitated an increase in population of the
area and the informal settlements due to the promise of living in an
environment with plugged leaks, painted walls, adequate toilet con-
ditions and safely distributed electricity supply (Martin, 2015). This
proves how the “forced” depoliticisation of Shatila by the Lebanese
state which constitutes a void in the social and symbolic order,
simultaneously generates a hyper-politicisation of the camp whereby
“new competing identities and orders form” (Turner, 2015, p.145).
Despite the intense development of social, political, and cultural
identity within the camp, it does not take away from the fact that
refugee camps can also become places one “would want to leave as
soon as social mobility permits”(Doraï, 2010). Palestinian refugees
yearn more for their return to their exiled land than developing a
permanent settlement in the camps, as I had been told by a Pal-
estinian at the Perspectives on the Nakba lecture held at Oxford
Brookes University (2018) that: “If it meant that I can only sleep
under an olive tree in order to live in my homeland, then so be it”.
Their inclination to produce a more permanent enclave stems from
their shared memories of the Nakba and particularly for refugees
in Shatila, the Sabra-Shatila massacre in 1982. In other words, their
practice and input in reidentifying and reforming their “waiting-spac-
es” is an approach of resistance. Agier accurately summarises this
in From Refuge the Ghetto is Born (2011):
“The apparently radical and initial otherness that is lodged there
and it gives it distinct or inner meaning is in the reality the result
of the relation of conflict, rejection, and resistance between the
central power and the margin it has instituted” (Agier, 2011, p.284).

20 21
 CHAPTER 2:
To conclude, Shatila refugee camp is an inhabitation that appears
to be segregated and marginalised by the constraining laws upheld
by the Lebanese state that safeguard the country’s sovereignty
through ensuring the transiency of these camps. However, due to the
large influx of other groups of refugees and migrants flooding the
urban fabric of Beirut, we begin to discover on a personal level how
refugee camps can develop a strong connection with the urban en-
vironment they are supposed to be shut out from. One can see how
Shatila today sits within Beirut as a “portion of a city” and a place
that has been “filled up by the interior”(Agier, 2011, p.284).
However, the argument here is not to see how camps have changed
to develop into slums but analysing and providing a more developed
anthropological response and attitude towards this inevitable tran-
sition since long-term refugees like the Palestinians cannot remain
in tents forever until their right to return is granted. Michel Agier’s
more symbolic than geographical study of refugee camps provides a
personal observation of refugees and their relation to the camp in
comparison to Agamben’s valuable, yet statistical analysis of refu-
gees referring to them as a homogenous group thus overlooking the
entrepreneurial and empowering qualities of refugees in a space of
exception. This development of the refugees character translates and
reflects in the environment they inhabit and beyond as the bound-
aries that intend to keep them isolated erupts out onto the urban
grains of the city.

"Children playing in one of the camps streets with it´s tangled water pipes and electricity cables" (Bobst, 2017)

22 23
 Burj Al Barajneh refugee camp situated in the Southern suburbs of
Beirut, is the case study selected to explore how Palestinian ref-
ugees have continually transformed a place initially designed for
temporary settlement; intended to strip their basic human rights into
a home spatially organised to reproduce the spaces they left be-
hind and to which they are organising to return (Peteet, 2006, p.107).
Rebecca Roberts discovered this during her visit to the camp in 1997
as inhabitants “described the camp as resembling part of Palestine
because people who originated from the same village in Palestine had
settled together in one area of the camp.”(Roberts, 1999, p.1).
Despite the Israeli occupation and demolition of these villages in
Palestine by force, these spaces are “still, socially speaking, alive
and coherent units”(Sirhan, 1975, p.101). This enabled the refugees
to “draw on past history of support and exchange to cope”(Peteet,
2006, p.111). The organisation of the camp and naming the camps space
by village at its bare beginnings signified both a “memory scape and
a practical spatial enactment of the lost homeland” (ibid, p.95).
Agamben in In Praise of Profanation (2007), asserts that for a
place to alter its pre-definition, to become profane, or in his words
“non-sacred” it must be “brought back to the use of the common”
(Maqusi, 2017, p.20). Profanation for Agamben “occurs through an act
of play, a particular form of negligence towards the sacred and the
religion of its norms” (Boano and Talocci, 2014, p.68). The transfor-
mation of the camp from sacred to profane according to Agamben
is reliant on a ruling or judgement arbitrated by a sovereign power.
However, through a morphological analysis of the camp one can arrive
to the conclusion that the shift towards the “profane” does not rest
upon the sovereign as the decision maker but upon the refugees
themselves.
Architect and urban specialist, Samar Maqusi (2017) illustrates to us
how the “decision making” to transfer something from the sacred to
the profane within the Palestinian camp “involves a process of spa-
tial violations by the refugees” (Maqusi, 2017, p.24). Maqusi reveals
through her spatial analysis that refugees throughout the develop-
ment of the camp have demonstrated profanity towards the sacred
spatial rules jointly set up by the UNRWA and the Lebanese gov-
ernment. This is where one can suggest Agamben is lacking in when
examining the camp due to the failure of discovering that the agency
of refugees can indeed overlap with the agencies of the sovereign
(Maqusi, 2017).
Maqusi’s detailed spatial analysis of Burj Al Barajneh fills in what
seems to be the missing link with looking at how the Palestinian
Burj Al Barajneh (Maqusi, 2016)
24
refugee camps are sites of exceptional political practice, this miss-
ing link is a credible architectural mapping to identify how the urban
fabric of the camps is etched and behaves in order to understand
how this space operates the exception that exists within.
Agambens argument that the refugee symbolises a “pure expres-
sion” of bare life “until they are re-codified into a new national
identity”(Agamben, 1998, p.144 cited in Fresia and Von Känel, 2015)
is made redundant in the case of contemporary camps such as
Burj Al Barajneh whereby a political identity is established through
the architectural and urban reformation of the camp. This chapter
will analyse the process by which the camp is rendered to become
profane, of common use and no longer sacred. The analysis of the
ambiguity of the state of being profane within the refugee camp, in
other words how the dismissal of designed rules and regulations set
forth by the sovereign occur through performing spatial violations.
Burj Al Barajneh which now houses more than 17,945 registered
refugees (UNRWA, 2018) in 1948 began as scattered tents situated
on “a plot of land under the disposal of UNRWA”(UNRWA, 2018) as
demonstrated diagrammatically by Maqusi in Fig.12. Each family were
housed in one tent and were made to assemble it organically on the
land. Within a few years the materiality of the tents changed to
mud rooms to adjust to the climate of Lebanon but also due to the
shortage of tents in the world market as the Assistance to Pales-
tine Refugees in the Report of the Director of UNRWA (1951)
expressed that “tents are becoming almost impossible to find on
world markets at any price, and the refugees are therefore being
encouraged to put up small structures for themselves.”
Due to the fact that the refugees’ displacement had appeared to be
more prolonged than expected, UNRWA began constructing shelters
and “laid a grid plan for each camp consisting of a 96-100m2 plots”
as shown in Fig.13.
A grid pattern is considered to be incredibly efficient in terms of
resources and cost of construction and is therefore often the
typical layout of contemporary cities. However, more importantly in
spaces of conflict a clear grid can grant the sovereign an ease of
control and increased accessibility of surveillance and oversight of
these spaces. Each of the 96-100m² plots were appointed to one
refugee family and were requested by UNRWA to assemble a 12m²
room made of straw-mud or pre-fabricated asbestos sheets with
zinc roofing within these plots. The UN were adamant on disallowing
a permanent roof material as this would discourage refugees from
25
Shelters were assembled in a scattered manner (Maqusi, 2017, p.253) Shelters organised in a grid layout by UNRWA (Maqusi, 2017, p.255)

26 27

Spatial violations through the formation of thresholds (Maqusi, 2017, p.257)
CHAPTER 3:
continuing to construct their homes vertically. Services such as
water and sanitation were supplied by UNRWA as “collective points
throughout the camp”(Maqusi, 2017, p.242), refugees were made to
provide for
themselves as UNRWA intended to make them become self-dependent
and no longer in need of aid.
This form of the camp is what Maqusi termed as a “relief-scale”
which took place within the frame of self-support. This plot is the
“area granted a personal “right of use” for each refugee family”
(Maqusi, 2017). “Right of use” is a term the UN used to imply that
the refugees have the right to use the plot for their own means but
cannot own it, therefore, anything built beyond the boundaries of the
100m² of their “right of use” would be deemed a spatial violation and
thus sanctioned for removal (Maqusi, 2017).
The first act of spatial violation dated much prior to the construc-
tion of the camps when the tents were only just being distributed
amongst the refugees as relief shelters (Maqusi, 2017). According to
Samar Maqusi’s interviews conducted with refugees, in Burj El Bara-
jneh, refugees with a higher status were able to transgress the
law and commit spatial violations unsanctioned and gain “leverage to
secure or better, acquire more space”(ibid, p.242).
This therefore initiated the dismantling of the camp from its “relief
scale” and stimulated the re-appropriation of the camp to a truly
Palestinian one (Maqusi, 2017); granting one’s distant memory of their
home reintroduced in a foreign land. As mentioned in previous chap-
ters, we are aware of the radical impact the Cairo Accords and the
presence of the PLO (Palestinian resistance) had on the urban fabric
of the camp and its relationship with the city, however one may claim
that the presence of the PLO within the camps caused an accelera-
tion of spatial violations during this time. The PLO between the 1960s
and 70s governed and oversaw operations in the camp which subse-
quently prompted a decline in UNRWAs role within the camps whereby
they were merely responsible for “providing services, shelter rehabil-
itation and emergency response”(Maqusi, 2017).
The practice of spatial violiations and the infringement of the “right-
of-use” passage inclined and were seemingly encouraged by the PLO
since the camp began to undergo a “rapid transformation from as-
bestos to concrete” (Maqusi, 2017, p.256) and the “realignment of
Spatial violation through the construction of staircases (Maqusi, 2017, p.261)
walls beyond the 96-100m² plot demarcation (ibid, 2017) began to
appear as thresholds (Fig.14) which took shape in order to form a
public/social congregation space for each family. One must affirm
that the use of concrete is not about the performance of its ma-
teriality but about the political agenda that lies behind it. With the
absence of the Lebanese state and reduced authority of UNRWA,
ostensibly “turning a blind eye”, refugees took this opportunity to
exploit the set rules and the exceptionality of the camp.
This in turn paved the way to a continued sequence of indepen-
dence carried out by the spatial violations undertaken. This prac-
tice of evolving transgressions also evoked a symbol of resistance
as we discover that this self-governing discipline, “supplanted
the language of subordination with that of agreement and created
a common area of synchronic relationships, negotiations between
governing and governed” instead of the classic system in which
the sovereign solely guides and affirms the refugees’ acquiescence
(Abreek-Zubiedat, 2014, p.90).
We can assert that through the development of an agency ref-
ugees are able to redefine the “power-relations” with the host
government and in that sense these acts are deemed “political” as
it is “the expression of a particular structure of power relations”
(Mouffe,2005, p.18).
Between the 1980s and 90s, the plots were now horizontally and
highly saturated with concrete. The refugees would then move onto
“encroaching” vertically (Maqusi, 2016). In order to successfully
complete this task, the refugees would utilise it through the instal-
lation of external stairs (Fig.15) made out of temporary materials
such as pre-fabricated metal. These attentively placed staircases
were simply nailed to the external concrete walls and provided the
refugees a vertical axis, thus permitting the construction to contin-
ue and be transferred onto the vertical sphere (ibid.).
As time passed on, the refugees began to slowly morph the tempo-
rary material of these staircases into concrete. This further empha-
sised the permanency of the refugees’ settlement in the camp but
also the marking of their territory. The continuation of construction
within the vertical sphere initiated a physical relationship between
buildings as they literally intersected, as expressed in Fig.16. During
this time, one can say that the refugee camp arrived at its final
stages of its transformation.
Samar Maqusi in her lecture on Spatial Refuge (2016) expressed how
these consistent spatial violations demonstrated to be beneficial
for the refugees when the “war of the camps” broke out in Leba-
non between May 1985 and July 1988. Burj Al Barajneh was severely
affected during this period as the camp was under siege for six
months, rendering refugees to become forcibly reliant on the scarce
resources available within the camp. During the six months, a very

28 29

Spatial Violations in operation inside Burj el Barajneh camp (Maqusi, 2017, p.263)
CHAPTER 3:
violent armed conflict took place between the Shia Militia (Leba-
nese faction) and the Palestinian refugees. The refugees utilised the
spatial violation they constructed as a line of defence against the
Militia, assembling an incredibly smart “network of axis in the camp
to where they avoided moving on the ground”(Maqusi, 2016).
During a war or conflict setting it is usually advised to be off the
ground to reduce vulnerability from attacks and bombs; either to be
below ground whereby armies in the past would dig tunnels or oper-
ate above the ground, which is what occurred in Burj Al Barajneh.
With the close proximity between the buildings and the narrow pas-
sageways it produced as well as the scale of the buildings incurred
by the spatial violations, refugees resorted to constructing openings
in the external concrete wall to connect two opposite facing buildings
with a wooden slab. The Palestinian refugees consistently construct-
ed this throughout the camp on three levels as shown
axonometrically by Maqusi in Fig.18.
In an interview with Maqusi (2014), Abou Mohammad, a Palestinian
refugee whom participated in the War of the Camps, describes his
experience of the “War of the Camps” by stating:
“When the Shi’a Amal militiamen would attack us, we would fight them
from the underground shelters. Another group would be on the first
floor, a group on the second floor, a group on the third, and one on
the fourth, thus avoiding the disadvantaged ground level. The way
we achieved this was through drawing a map of the camp, we would
then identify the various elevated shelter walls which come face to
face with one another, and we would then make an opening on oppos-
ing walls while extending a wooden board between the openings, thus
instantly creating a connecting pathway across different shelters.
Once completed, we discovered that we could enter 400-500 shel-
ters through these passageways without our feet ever touching the
ground.”(Interview with Abu Mohammad (Salah), Burj el Barajneh camp,
Beirut Lebanon, September 2014)
The success in the survival and protection of the refugees during
the intense period of the “war of the camps” was heavily dependent
on the previous and continuous acts of spatial violations committed
over several decades. This reflects on the claim introduced earlier
this chapter that the shift of the camp from the sacred to profane
rests solely upon decisions and arrangements made by the refugees,
which occurred due to events that materialised beyond the host
nations control.
With every act of spatial violation there is an act of political in-
strumentalisation occurring simultaenously (Maqusi, 2016); a message
of resistance that points to us and the rest of the internation-
al community, a reminder of their constant struggles of the past
which now constitutes a part of Palestinian identity shared globally.
Samar Maqusi eloquently summarises this in her Thesis, Acts of
spatial violation: constructing the political inside the Palestinian
refugee camp (2017):
“Resistance is not a static notion, but a very active and operational
one. The camp today remains a site of operational resistance, but
due to the protracted state of displacement, it is inevitable that
the form and mode of resistance has taken on different forms.”
(Maqusi, 2017, p.251).
Today most of the houses at Burj Al Barajneh are three or four
storeys high. The space provided by the flat roofs that were once
considered temporary are now often used for growing small fruits
and vegetables such as grapes, figs, beans and herbs or keeping
hens and goats (Roberts, 1999). Furthermore, with the management
and distribution of electrical supply the inhabitants seem to be
“free to alter the wiring in their homes and run extra lines from
the camp supply”(ibid, p.4).
The grid pattern that started the formation of the camp is now de-
veloped into a complex labyrinth of passages impossible to travel in
by cars, as shown by this video Fig.17. The etching of the landscape
of the camp and its reformation of its identity by the refugees is
made evident through these observations and morphological studies
whereby we can see how “their social relations and practices shape
the physical and social environment, distinguishing it from the exte-
rior, and impose symbolic meaning” (Peteet, 2006).
Understanding the camp space as a developing process reinvigorates
our idea of refugees as “passive victims” stripped from their iden-
tity and values and recipients of aid to active, political agents (Fan,
2012, p.73).
Ian Davis in Shelter After Disaster further expresses this by
stating:
“If shelter is perceived in these terms as a dynamic process, this
opens the way to recognise the value of this range of options. It
also develops an awareness of patterns of continual change, as
one mode of shelter may be rapidly replaced by another within the
recovery process” (Davis, 2005, p.3).
The spatiality of Burj Al Barajneh differs from Agambens assertion
that the camp’s “apparatus” is described as a device of power

30 31
Journey through Burj Al Barajneh (Maqusi, 2016) Passageways created in Burj Al Barajneh (Maqusi, 2017, p.292-3)

32 33
 CHAPTER 3:
stationed on the rationale of bare life and the exception when in
fact the ability of refugees “contests and transcends it through
political mobilisation and numerous appropriations of the camp space”
(Hyndman 2000; Agier 2008). The “apparatus” of the camp can there-
fore no longer be “reduced to the single rationality of the production
of bare life” (Fresia and Von Känel, 2015, p.251). Through observing
how camps are “effectively governed in different regional settings
and referring to a more empirical understanding of sovereignty”
(Hansen and Stepputat, 2006 cited in Fresia and Von Känel, 2015,
p.251) one can arrive to the conclusion that various forms of author-
ities “coexist and overlap within the camp device, making it difficult
to reduce it to the mere expression of the power to banish” (Oesch
2012; Ramadan 2013 cited in Fresia and Von Känel, 2015, p.253).

Burj Al Barajneh before and after (Screenshot from Maqusi, 2016)

34 35

"Refugees walking through Nahr el-Bared, Lebanon refugee camp, 1952" (UNRWA,2017)
This chapter will address when refugee camps are placed under ex-
treme circumstances there are oppressive qualities that come to the
surface thus in fact equating to the Agambenian (1998) concept of
“bare life” and spaces of “exception”. The destroyed camp of Nahr El
Bared located in Tripoli, Lebanons appropriately named “Guantanamo
2” underwent inappropriate events which damaged the “character” of
the camp (Ramadan, 2009) and developed to become the host coun-
try’s most segregated, monitored, and securitised camp.
Despite the events that lead to the destruction of the camp and in
particular the aftermath of the battle that took place in Nahr El
Bared which consisted of displacement, looting and arson and there-
fore “a case of Urbicide in a space of exception” (ibid.), the refugee’s
ability to resist prevailed through the redevelopment of an informal
economy but also through “regaining their political agency” within a
confined perimeter (Amiri, 2016, p.52).
This therefore expresses how Agambens perception of the refu-
gee’s reality within the camp does not entirely reflect what occurs
in these camps today. Another example that proves this is from the
Kingdom Of Women docummentary (2010) on Lebanon’s largest and
“most conflict-ridden camp”, Ayn al-Hilweh (Knusden, 2016) in which
refugees rebuilt their destroyed homes without support from the
host government nor UNRWA which constitutes a “phantom sovereign-
ty” (Hanafi, 2010, p. 30).
During the 2007 Lebanon conflict, Nahr El-Bared camp located in the
suburbs of Tripoli, Lebanon underwent constant bombardment and
shelling during the 2007 Lebanon conflict due to the attacks between
Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist militant organisation and the Lebanese
Armed Forces (LAF). The camps continuation to flourish as the “cen-
tral market place for north Lebanon” and the “most prosperous camp
in the country”(Knudsen, 2016, p.448) was decimated without sanction
and restriction during the conflict.
Established in 1949, Nahr El Bared refugee camp is the “second larg-
est camp in Lebanon and one of the most densely populated” (Rob-
erts, 1999,p.3). The camp originally was a waiting place for refugees
until their “right to return” to their homeland was authorised (New-
man, 2010).
With time, UNRWA converted the site into a camp (Peteet, 2006,
p.108), the majority of residents of Nahr El Bared originated from a
certain village in Palestine since in the days of the Nakba, “90 per-
cent of the people in the camp were from the village of Saffuriya”
(Ibid., p.113). The three-month 2007 conflict of Nahr el Bared lead to
“the subsequent displacement of some 27,000 Palestine refugees
from the camp and its adjacent areas” as much of the camp was
destroyed (UNRWA, 2011).
The camp consisted of two parts as shown in Fig.22: “the “old
camp”, the official one, was totally destroyed, while the “new camp”,
the unofficial extension, was partly destroyed” (Doraï, 2011, p.80).
Within a few months refugees were granted their return to parts
of the “new camp” which enveloped the original 1km² “old camp”
(Ramadan, 2009, p153).
However, upon their return they discovered their home completely
ransacked and defaced:
“Houses smashed first by shells and bombs, then by vandalism and
arson, possessions stolen and broken, offensive graffiti daubed on
walls.” (Ramadan, 2009, p.153).
The fact that even at the aftermath of the battle, Nahr El Bared
underwent a period of vandalism, looting and arson without a bat
of an eyelid from the host country points to us that this is a case
of urbicide in a space of exception (ibid.). Urbicide is defined as the
“the destruction of a city or its character” (Oxford Dictionary, 2018)
the expression was initially “used in the 1960s to refer to inappro-
priate developments that impaired the character of cities” (Ramadan,
2009).
Martin Shaw (2004) argues that Urbicide can be described as a
“form of genocide” and thus in Bosnia a “strategy of genocidal war”
(Shaw, 2004, p. 149, cited from Ramadan, 2009, p.156). The erasure
of the settlements in the capital of Bosnia and specifically buildings
that symbolise and express Bosnian Muslim identity such as mosques
but also cultural symbols of Bosnia such as National Museum and
Oriental Institute in Sarajevo is argued to be a deliberate strategy
to ensure genocide of not only Bosnian lives but the memories and
character that are carried with it was successful, in other words
the enforcement of bare life (ibid, 2009).
From assessing the events that happened in the camp, one could
argue that the situation in Nahr El Bared reflects and carries qual-
ities of the Homo Sacer (Agamben, 1998) the “sacred man – a man
stripped of all legal existence, reduced to his bare life and con-
demned to die” (Ramadan, 2009, p.153). It could be viewed that due
to the inhabitants of the camp suffering from the torment caused
by the conflict in addition to their lives and homes being shunned
from the protection of the law, one can argue that refugee lives
are deemed to be “sacred” and can be removed from existence
without a consequence levied upon the sovereign. As described by

36 37
Destruction of Nahr El Bared (Tadamon, 2007).
"2030 buildings completely destroyed (in red in the map), 120 partially destroyed."
(Nahr el Bared News from the North Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp, 2009)

38 39
 Sari Hanafi and Taylor Long (2010, p.14):
“The life of a homo sacer has no political significance to the sov-
ereign. He exists only in a bio-logical capacity or in “bare life” (zoë)
and thus, like something less than human, must be provided for only
in a most rudimentary sense (i.e. given food, water, and shelter) and
kept removed (i.e. in exile or incarceration) from the ordinary exis-
tence of mankind in “political life” (bios).”
The refugees can be identified as the Homo Sacer during this period
since many Palestinian civilians had suspicions that they were delib-
erately being ethnically cleansed by their host government as “the
camp was largely shelled during the early days of the battle despite
“the presence of a very high and dense civilian population”(Hanafi,
2010, p.159).
in Fig.23 whereby a militarised enclosure took shape and “boundaries
were physically established” in the form of checkpoints and wired
fences. Knudsen (2016, p. 453) argues that the wrecked Nahr El
Bared camp “turned into a penalised space, an outdoor imprisonment
that comes close to Wacquant’s concept of the hyper-ghetto”.
The Lebanese military have repeatedly used the issue of “security”
to justify their demeanour towards the Palestinian refugees, the
belief that all kinds of Palestinian political activity is a “de-facto a
threat” to Lebanese sovereignty and would throw Lebanon’s frag-
ile sectarian state off balance (Hanafi and Long, 2010, p.149). The
Lebanese state have previously vocalised that they wish Palestin-
ians to develop a sense of positive self-governance but eventually
turned to “scaremongering (Palestinians) about “security islands” or
a “state within a state”(ibid.).

“It’s like an earthquake. it wasn’t a war against Fateh al-Islam but

Wire fences and military checkpoints establishing camp boundaries (Nahr el Bared News from the North Lebanon
Palestinian refugee camp, 2009)
barbaric actions against us as Palestinians and against our successes
in life. There are no houses left untouched. they removed trees and
plants, destroyed buildings.” (Ramadan, 2009, p.161, quoting Palestinian
female, 34, Nahr El-Bared).
It is widely believed among the inhabitants that Urbicide was in fact
a “strategy for removal of Palestinian urbanisation and population
growth as it is seen as a threat to Lebanese sovereignty” (Graham,
2002, p.645) and that it was enforced by the Lebanese government
to achieve “political gain” (Knudsen, 2016).
Palestinian refugees suffered “double alienation” (Hanafi, 2008) in
which they not only are placed at a distance from their origin but
also from “urban and social domains in the host society” (ibid., p.89)
due to the government’s refusal to grant them basic human rights.
Palestinians have to deal with “intense work restrictions, being
banned from all public sector jobs and most private professions; they
are denied access to Lebanese welfare, educational and healthcare
services; they are denied all civil and political rights including the
right to vote; they cannot buy property in Lebanon or pass on prop-
erty to their next of kin” (Shaaban, Abbas, Sirhan, & Hassan, 1997,
p.387, cited from Ramadan, 2009, p. 154).
During this period of urbicide the inhabitants of Nahr El Bared lost
their political agency and were reduced to helplessness and there-
fore subject to a ‘bare life’ due to not only suffering “double alien-
ation” (Hanafi, 2008) and neglect from the government but “the Leba-
nese army presence in the camp expanded the space of the Lebanese
state and disregarded the extraterritoriality of the camp” as shown
The constant threats from the soveriegn however did not stop
refugees from resisting and gaining independence. Foucault claimed
that resistance can manifest in various forms throughout history
and events (Foucault, 1982, p. 780-1) but one can further postulate
that resistance can erupt within the confined exceptional territo-
ries, contrary to Agambens assertion that it is “not possible from
within the structure of the camp, as life in the camp is only zoë
and never bios” (Jamal and Sandor, 2010, p.3) and therefore could
never evoke a sense of autonomy nor development of agency (Ag-
amben, 1998). In addition, an “anti-authority struggle” is insufficient
to describe the term resistance (Foucault, 1982, cited from Jamal
and Sandor, 2010, p.5). Foucault stresses that the main objective of
resistance is “not to attack certain “institution of power group, or
group, or elite, or class but rather a technique, a form of power”
(ibid, 1982).
Professor Derek Gregory (2006) disputes Agambens perception and
points out to us that in fact places of exception including those of
extreme exception such as Guantanamo Bay “need to be seen not as
paradigmatic spaces of political modernity, but rather as potential
spaces whose realisation is an occasion for political struggle not
pessimism” (ibid., p. 405).
The Lebanese governments inconceivable efforts to further reduce
refugees to the embodiment of the Homo Sacer is rendered less
successful due to Palestinians unwavering resistance which has
ensured an increased “quasi-permanency” (Turner, 2015) of refugee
settlement. UNRWA’s film “Return to Nahr el-Bared Camp” (2010)
outlines the thought process behind the reconstruction. UNRWA aims

40 41
 to make sure refugees have a close connection to a place they
would have to call home for a while. Abdel Latif Issa who works as
Acting Head Relief and Recovery of UNRWA explained that they had
a project to “reactivate the businesses that were lost” through the
distribution of grants to the business to “enable them to start pro-
viding services to the people to guarantee they stay in the area and
to rekindle life in the camp”(ibid.).The refugee’s ability to vocalise
their need to re-establish the informal economy that they had lost
during the conflict expresses to us that “the destruction of Nahr El
Bared in Tripoli symbolises the reversibility of the Palestinian settle-
ment in the country” (Doraï, 2010, p.7).
UNRWA recognises the fact that “refugees are not without agency,
individually or collectively”(Owens, 2009, cited from Knudsen, 2016, p.
443) since they try to “build consensus with the families from the
size of the apartments to the size of the streets. Everything has to
be with the consent of the families of Nahr El Bared and the Leb-
anese government” (UNRWA Lebanon, 2010). This implies that not all
decisions are solely made by the sovereign, but the inhabitants of
the encampment also carry a political power to guide the development
of the camps reconstruction.
Another example of a camp that proves that the omission of the
Lebanese governments presence does not hinder the refugee’s ca-
pability of resistance is Ayn El Hilweh. Located in Southern Lebanon,
the camp heavily suffered from the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in
1982. The camp was destroyed after two days of blockade and vio-
lent bombardment. The Israeli Occupation forces in Sidon raided homes
and detained families, about 9000 Palestinians were imprisoned during
the invasion majority were men between the ages of 14 and 60 years
old (The Kingdom of Women: Ein El Hilweh, 2010). This left the camp
of Ayn El Hilweh inhabited merely with women, the camp was in fact
described among Palestinian refugees as “The Kingdom of Women”.
“Israeli forces round up all the men, they called all the men between
14 and 60 years to gather together. They took my father, they took
my brother, I was left with 5 babies alone” (ibid., interview with Um
Mohammad).
Since the men were not able to move freely, the women of the camp
took the role of communicating with Political leadership. they were
“the link between the inside and outside” (ibid., interview with Kh-
adjieh). Alone, the women of the camp began to figure out ways to
support each other, and deal with their new reality; embroidery, a
Still from The Kingdom of Women: Ein El Hilweh documentary (2010)
42
solution to generating income:
Khadjieh expressed that her “secret political work was a response
to their reality”. As she believed that “any small deed like deliv-
ering a salary to a family in need was crucial” (ibid., interview with
Khadjieh).
The Israeli military “bulldozed the southern area of the camp” (ibid.,
interview with Um Amer) despite having already destroyed it during
the conflict. The reconstruction process ignited and UNRWA came in
to allocate the land, they provided tents and brought grey tiles to
mark the ground for tent allocation. The refugees were not satis-
fied with UNRWA’s lack of input and unhappy with the idea of living
in tents (ibid.). The lack of response from the sovereign and UNRWA
led the refugees to their protest, from this, we can see the refu-
gee’s undying capability of exercising political power:
“It happened spontaneously, a group of us women from the southern
area confronted them (the tanks) in protest. The Israelis came after
us while another group destroyed the tents. Finally, we got a tank
of gas and burned the tents.
The tents idea was cancelled” (Ibid., Um Amer).
The refugees were to rely upon themselves to bring forth an ad-
equate quality living as Um Amer (2010) continues to recount their
journey of reconstructing Ayn El Hilweh:
“We started however we could. People needed homes. And there
was a huge fear of being displaced…we shared the different tasks,
some built and some prepared food. (Those who built) quickly built
two rooms with amenities. We carried the dirt and rocks, we made
cement”.
The reconstruction of Nahr El Bared by the UN Relief and Works
Agency is almost complete and as according to UNRWA’s website
(2018), 1,321 families have returned to the camp, while another 3,546
families remain displaced in temporary shelters, until further recon-
struction funds are secure (Maqusi, 2017, p.297).
To conclude, Nahr El Bared during the period of urbicide expressed
two important qualities with Agambens concept of the camp: as a
space in which “the rule of law is suspended” due to the absence
of the Lebanese state and secondly, the camp was then designed as
a separation of the majority of Palestinian refugee population from
Lebanese civilisation through the creation of a military enclosure
(Ramadan,2009, p.157).
43
 However when confined in a space of exception there is the inverse
effect due to the creation of a political agency by the refugees;
Jamal and Sandor (2010, p.9) explain that in fact the “constant de-
struction of places of residence not only serves particular functions
for the Lebanese and Israeli governments, but is identified as a spe-
cific form of resistance for the Palestinian people as they continue
to rebuild those areas despite increasing hardships”.

The reconstruction period enabled the refugees to regain their voice

and assert their right to return to the camp. With support from the
UNRWA and multiple international organisations, not only were they
guaranteed their return but also gave them an agency to administer
the construction process. The aim here is not to romanticise refugee
efforts and overlook the adversity and poverty they face but to
encourage a reformation of how we perceive and analyse spaces of
exception.

Destruction and the reconstruction of Nahr El Bared (Frearson, 2013)

44 45
 As mentioned by Agier (2011, p. 188) Palestinian camps are truly “the As Simon Turner mentioned in his article (2015), “Agamben’s concept
background model for research on present-day camps” and a way of bare life indeed are fruitful but need anchoring empirically” as
for us to look further from the Agambens totalitarian observation through an exploration of these long existing refugee camps we can
of refugee camps and grant us to realise that one cannot overlook “demonstrate that refugees and others exposed to the camp are at
the social and cultural activity that erupts in these spaces of excep- once excluded and marginalised while simultaenously being able to
tion (Agier, 2011) . As for instance, the sovereign’s abandonment of create new identities, communities and political projects” (ibid.,p.147).
Shatila did not evoke ‘bare-life’ and render them the “human waste”
of the system but rather stimulated movement and development.
Upon taking this contemporary observation one can see how due to
location of the camp and unforeseen events, a camp can evolve to
an “multi-ethnic slum” (Knudsen, 2016) whereby an increased social
mobility within the camp influences the urban fabric of the camp and
its surrounding areas thus leading to a leakage into a city. Refugee
camps in this case could also be described as “Heterotopias” (Fou-
cault, 1986) as in contrary to Agambens view that the development
of the camp can only be controlled by the sovereign, Palestinian
refugee camp’s transformation was largely guided by events that
occurred beyond the Lebanese states control and thus executed by
refugees themselves, often with support from international organ-
isations, through the form of spatial violations as orchestrated by
the inhabitants of Burj Al Barajneh or the settlement of Palestinian
refugees outside the camps boundaries as occured in Shatila. One
cannot however disregard the fact that camps due to its exceptional
nature can become sensitive to falling into the embodiment of the
Homo Sacer when facing disaster as depicted through my exploration
of the Urbicide of Nahr El Bared.

However, my exploration also discovered that with time and recuper-

ation this regression to a ‘bare-life’ within the camps can subside
due to the exercise of extreme de-politicisation by the government
which induced a hyper-politicisation of the encampment (Turner,
2015). A political agency can emerge within these spaces of excep-
tion, threatening the intended transient nature of the camp through
various acts of resistance and independence, whether through the
self-reconstruction of the camp by the inhabitants of Ayn El Hilweh
or the people of Shatila generating their own household income by
taking advantage of the large influx of Syrian refugees. All these
observations discovered from a more personal study of the three
refugee camps present a strong conclusion that refugee camps today
cannot be painted by the same brush as a space of ‘bare life’ but
a realm that can evoke resistance and assert change by the very
agents that reside within it.

Proximity between settlements in Burj Al Barajneh (Maqusi, 2016)

46 47

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