While national belonging was a primary factor that separated
the Palestinians from the Lebanese, it was not an exclusive one.
Confessional and financial patterns were also arbitrarily applied in
order to divide those worth protecting and integrating from those
whose exclusion was essential. If we extend the concept of biopolitics,
distancing its definition from a purely legal understanding
to include other forms of abandonment and exclusion, the Palestinian
refugees in Lebanon are not the only ‘banned’. Fawaz and
Peillen (2002: 4) reported that since the end of the civil war
more than twenty-five percent of the Lebanese population ‘lives
below the poverty line’, while ‘25.8 percent of individuals […] in
Beirut earn less than US$106/month’. Though Lebanese poverty has
been aggravated by the massive displacement and destruction
caused by the civil war (1975e1990), looking at the root of the
Lebanese citizenship illustrates how economic and sectarian concerns
have always had the upper hand in the decision-making
process that shaped Lebanon as a state and its population.