Roman ruins put Nahr al Bared camp rebuild at risk

Mitchell Prothero, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: September 05. 2009 11:56PM UAE / September 5. 2009 7:56PM GMT

BEIRUT // The seemingly endless struggle by Lebanon’s political factions to form a national unity government appears to have spilt over the efforts to rebuild a Palestinian refugee camp destroyed in 2007, as a major political party has filed a lawsuit to halt reconstruction.

A lawsuit filed by the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), led by the former general, Michel Aoun, demanded that the rebuilding of the Nahr al Bared camp be halted in order to protect Roman ruins that were discovered during the clean up of the 2007 siege, much to the anger of the camp’s 20,000 former residents who are still displaced since the fighting.

...

After the lawsuit succeeded last week, Khalil Mekawi of the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee held an urgent meeting with prime minister Fouad Siniora and warned the prime minister that this decision might cause outrage among Lebanon’s estimated 250,000 Palestinian camp residents that could spill out across the country, leading to, in his words, “chaos”.
Depressing news indeed for those who were hoping that a new chapter in Lebanese-Palestinian relations might be forged in the aftermath of the 2007 NBC clashes.

(Also, UAE-based The National is emerging as an excellent source of English-language regional news, for those of you who may not have seen it before.)