In a series of Tweets, the leader of the Courant Patriotique Libre Gébran Bassil denounced the decision of the Minister of Labor Mustafa Hussein Bayram allowing the exercise of many professions previously reserved such as medicine for Palestinian refugees.
Gébran Bassil therefore considers that this decision of the Minister of Labor violates both the law of the labor code and the Lebanese constitution and induces a veiled naturalization of the Palestinian refugees present in Lebanon. He therefore calls on the Council of State and the Lebanese population to reject this decision.
قرار وزير العمل السماح للفلسطينيين ومكتومي القيد بممارسة عشرات المهن المحصورة باللبنانيين مخالف لقانون العمل وللدستور وهو توطين مقنع ومرفوض.ندعو النقابات لكسره امام مجلس شورى الدولة, واللبنانيين لعدم الالتزام به.ما بتمرق هيك قصة! وما رح نسمح بتشليح اللبنانيين وظائفهم بهالظروف! GB
– Gebran Bassil (@Gebran_Bassil) December 9, 2021
As a reminder, Lebanon unofficially hosts more than 500,000 Palestinian refugees – often descendants of those who arrived in 1948 -, to which would be added 40,000 to 50,000 Palestinian refugees who fled the Syrian civil war. The latter are, like the Lebanese population, affected by the serious economic crisis that the Land of the Cedars is currently going through.
For the Lebanese authorities, according to the last census, in 1992, there are 317,376 Palestinian refugees present in its territory. According to UNWRA statistics from 1995, there are 370,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon present in 12 camps in which just 45.1% reside there.
For its part, the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee estimated according to the results of its census launched in February 2017 that 174,422 Palestinian refugees are currently in the Land of the Cedars.
Many Lebanese fear the naturalization of Palestinian refugees, who are also accused of having caused the demographic imbalance that their very presence implies, the civil war of 1975.
