She has lived for 73 years in Lebanon, but she will never become a citizen there

The New Arab has a profile of an 88 year old woman, Amna Hasan Mawd, who fled Palestine during the 1948 war and ended up in Lebanon.

At the end of the interview, Mawd says, "[My husband] had written on his picture, before he died: “I want to die in Palestine.” But he died as a refugee and did not return to Palestine, and it seems that I will die as a refugee too."

The point, of course, is to say how awful it is that she is still a refugee after 73 years. But the real question is - why is she not a citizen of Lebanon after 73 years? 

That could be changed, of course. Lebanon could offer citizenship for Palestinians who have lived there for, say, over thirty or fifty years, let alone seventy.

What country keeps its refugees without any options of becoming naturalized for over seven decades?

It is fairly rare where you will see an article criticizing Lebanon for how it treats its Palestinian refugees. For any other kind of refugee, this would be major news. But there is an unwritten contract between the Lebanese, Arabs, human rights organizations and the media that only Israel can be blamed for 73 years of Lebanese mistreatment of Palestinians. That Palestinians, alone among all refugee groups, should never be naturalized. 

Because these groups, who all claim to care so much about Palestinian human rights, want to keep these people stateless indefinitely, so that they can become cannon fodder for the eventual destruction of Israel.

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