Palestinian camps in Lebanon: the governance challenge

Any approach to the crisis of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon must begin not with the question of how to administer them, but with an understanding of why these camps have existed for decades under exceptional conditions within the Lebanese state. The problem has never been merely administrative or security-related, even if it has often appeared that way. Rather, it is the result of an accumulation of political, legal, and social factors connected to the Palestinian refugee question, the nature of the relationship between the Lebanese state and Palestinian refugees, and the transformations experienced by Palestinian society, Lebanon, and the wider region.

Against this background, the launch of consultations on the National Plan for the Governance of Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon, held at the Grand Serail on October 30, 2026, opens a debate that extends beyond the document itself and its main pillars. It raises questions about the changes the plan could bring to conditions inside the camps and to Lebanese-Palestinian relations more broadly. The issue is not whether the Lebanese state needs to extend its authority and sovereignty across its entire territory. That is an uncontested constitutional principle and an essential attribute of sovereignty. The question is how to translate that principle into a legal and institutional framework that safeguards security and stability while protecting the civil, social, and human rights of Palestinian refugees, without compromising their national identity or their right of return.

From the Cairo Agreement to the Era of Governance

The current debate over camp governance cannot be understood without revisiting the Cairo Agreement, signed on November 3, 1969, between the Lebanese state and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The agreement emerged at a time when the armed Palestinian revolution was seeking to organize its presence in Lebanon and conduct guerrilla operations, while the Lebanese state was attempting to regulate that presence and define its relationship with the country’s military and civilian institutions.

The agreement addressed the organization of the Palestinian presence, rights relating to employment, residence, and freedom of movement, and the establishment of local Palestinian committees within the camps to look after residents’ interests in cooperation with local authorities. It also regulated aspects of guerrilla activities and relations with the Lebanese army, while reaffirming that Lebanese civilian and military authorities would continue to exercise their powers and responsibilities. Yet the agreement arose in an exceptional political and security environment and failed to prevent the escalation of tensions and contradictions surrounding the armed Palestinian presence and its relationship with the Lebanese state.

On May 21, 1987, the Lebanese Parliament repealed the agreement. Its repeal, however, neither resolved the issues that had developed under its provisions nor established a comprehensive alternative framework governing relations between the state and Palestinian refugees.

The significance of revisiting the Cairo Agreement lies neither in advocating its restoration nor in seeking to recreate the circumstances in which it was concluded. Rather, it lies in understanding how the nature of the Palestinian question in Lebanon has changed. In 1969, the central issue was how to regulate the armed Palestinian presence and its relationship with the Lebanese state. Today, Lebanon is home to a Palestinian society that has lived there for more than seven decades, facing accumulated legal, social, economic, and urban challenges amid prolonged displacement and the continuing political deadlock over the Palestinian question.

Between these two periods, responsibilities and realities have changed, but questions concerning Palestinian representation, the boundaries of institutional authority, refugee rights, and relations with the Lebanese state remain unresolved. If the Cairo Agreement sought to regulate relations between the Lebanese state and the Palestinian revolution during the era of armed struggle, today’s challenge is to establish a relationship between the Lebanese state and Palestinian society in an era of protracted displacement. Such a relationship must be grounded in law and institutions and preserve both Lebanese sovereignty and Palestinian rights.

From Managing the Crisis to Addressing Its Causes

The national plan is structured around three main pillars encompassing arms, security, and defense; justice and the rule of law; camp administration; urban, social, and economic surveys; international support; and popular committees and community participation. The breadth of these areas reflects a recognition that conditions in the camps cannot be addressed through a security-focused approach alone. It also acknowledges the need for a clearer institutional framework governing relations among the Lebanese state, Palestinian institutions, municipalities, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Yet the range of areas covered does not, in itself, guarantee a new approach. The camps are not simply residential areas suffering from inadequate services or poor urban planning. They are refugee communities born of the uprooting of Palestinians from their homeland, which have developed over time into fully formed societies with their own institutions, representative structures, and distinct social and political characteristics.

The absence of a stable legal framework governing relations between the state and refugees, combined with Palestinian divisions, overlapping authorities, and the weakening of institutions, has created gaps in administration, security, and service provision. These gaps cannot be separated from policies that treated the Palestinian presence as a temporary matter, even as displacement continued across generations, transforming residents’ needs and ways of life.

Evaluating the plan therefore requires revisiting earlier initiatives, particularly the Unified Lebanese Vision on Issues Concerning Palestinian Refugees adopted in 2017. The task is not to repeat the headings found in previous documents, but to establish which provisions were never implemented, why implementation faltered, and whether the new plan possesses different mechanisms and the practical capacity to overcome the political, legal, and administrative obstacles that prevented earlier understandings from being carried out.

Lebanese Sovereignty and Palestinian Rights

The question of weapons occupies a central place in the plan, which seeks to end armed displays outside state control, arrange the gradual handover of weapons to the Lebanese army, strengthen the presence of legitimate security forces, and develop the concept of community policing. These measures form part of the broader implementation of Lebanese government decisions concerning the state’s monopoly over armed force and the extension of its authority.

Addressing this issue, however, must not reproduce an approach that reduces the camps to their security dimension. Restoring state authority cannot be achieved through security measures alone. It also requires the enforcement of the law, the clarification and unification of institutional authority, the provision of services, and the building of trust between official institutions and camp residents.

The same principle applies to civil and social rights. Palestinians’ right to work, to social protection, to property ownership, and to inheritance, as well as the regularization of the status of people lacking identity documents, cannot be postponed until the security issue has been resolved. Nor should they be turned into bargaining chips in political or security negotiations. These are issues in their own right, requiring clear legislative and administrative measures that must proceed in parallel with steps concerning weapons and security.

In his address, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam emphasized that improving conditions in the camps must combine security, the rule of law, and the proper functioning of institutions with efforts to address social, economic, urban, and public service needs. He also reaffirmed Lebanon’s rejection of the permanent settlement of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and of their forced displacement, its commitment to the right of return, and the need for UNRWA to continue fulfilling its responsibilities in accordance with its international mandate. For his part, Yasser Abbas, representing the Palestinian leadership, stressed that human and civil rights must not be made conditional upon any other process. These positions establish an essential benchmark for the plan: rights must not become promises indefinitely deferred, and the security issue must not serve as a pretext for suspending progress on every other front.

Who Represents Camp Residents?

Perhaps the most sensitive question surrounding the governance project concerns the place of camp residents in decision-making and in managing their own affairs. The plan refers to popular committees and community participation and proposes an institutional framework for camp administration. But governance involves more than establishing a new administrative body or redistributing responsibilities among institutions.

It also means determining who participates in decisions, how residents are represented, what accountability and oversight mechanisms are available, and how to ensure that the new administration does not become yet another layer of authority added to those already in place.

Palestinian society in Lebanon has changed, as have its needs and priorities. Traditional forms of representation may no longer adequately reflect its social, economic, and cultural diversity. Strengthening the role of popular committees should therefore be linked to clearly defined mechanisms of representation that enable residents to participate and create opportunities for women, young people, professional associations, and civil society organizations.

It is not enough for consultations simply to hear their views. These groups must have a meaningful role in setting the plan’s priorities, monitoring its implementation, and assessing its results. A camp is not an administrative object to be organized from the outside. It is a community whose members have the right to participate in decisions affecting their daily lives, within the framework of Lebanese state sovereignty and the law.

The Test Lies in Implementation, Not Statements of Intent

For the plan to move from conception to implementation, it needs a clear timetable, designated authorities responsible for each component, transparent sources of funding, measurable indicators, and mechanisms for accountability and evaluation. It must also define the relationship between the proposed camp administration body and the ministries, municipalities, Palestinian authorities, and UNRWA, to avoid reproducing the overlapping jurisdictions that have contributed to the crisis.

This cannot be separated from the role of UNRWA, which continues to shoulder essential responsibilities in education, healthcare, relief, and services. Reorganizing camp administration does not mean transferring the agency’s responsibilities to the Lebanese state without clearly defining powers, resources, and institutional responsibilities. Nor should it weaken UNRWA’s international mandate, which is directly tied to the Palestinian refugee question.

Likewise, economic and social development cannot be achieved merely by conducting demographic or urban surveys. It requires employment, investment, and training programs, along with the removal of legal barriers that restrict Palestinians’ ability to work, produce, and contribute to the Lebanese economy.

The consultations, scheduled to extend over six months, offer an opportunity to test the seriousness of Lebanese and Palestinian participation and the willingness of the parties concerned to develop the draft and introduce meaningful amendments. Their value will not be measured by the number of meetings held or organizations invited, but by the extent to which the observations submitted shape the final plan and the degree to which camp residents can genuinely participate in determining their future.

What Kind of Governance Do We Want?

The national plan for the governance of Palestinian refugee camps opens a necessary debate about the future of Lebanese-Palestinian relations. But it also raises a question that extends beyond the boundaries of the camps: can a new relationship be built between the Lebanese state and Palestinian refugees, based on clearly defined responsibilities and respect for sovereignty and the law, without becoming a security-centered relationship that reduces individuals to their legal status or place of residence?

Addressing the crisis requires a set of interconnected understandings: a Lebanese-Palestinian political agreement defining the nature of the relationship and the responsibilities of each party; a legal and legislative agreement resolving ambiguities surrounding civil and social rights; and an institutional agreement ensuring that camp residents participate in administration, oversight, and accountability.

Governance must not become a new label for managing an unchanged reality, or a means of rearranging institutions without altering the conditions that produced the crisis. The true measure of its success will be neither the number of bodies established nor the decisions issued, but the tangible improvements achieved in security, dignity, rights, and services, and the trust and partnership it succeeds in building between the Lebanese state and Palestinian society.

The problem is not whether the camps need governance, but what that governance should mean, who participates in shaping it, and whether it can address the roots of the crisis rather than merely its symptoms. The challenge facing this plan is to move Lebanese-Palestinian relations beyond the legacy of security arrangements and political ambiguities toward a clearly defined institutional partnership that safeguards Lebanon’s sovereignty and refugees’ rights, while preserving the national and political significance of the right of return, rather than allowing governance to become simply another formula for managing a crisis that continues without resolution.