World

Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees Face Rising Costs and Limited Work Opportunities

By Justin Salhani

Osama Najjar, a Palestinian refugee in the Beddawi camp in Tripoli, closed his aluminium shop in early 2024 after business stalled and bills rose. He says high prices and increasing electricity costs are the main concerns for Palestinians in Lebanon’s camps.

Palestinians first arrived in Lebanon as refugees after the 1948 Nakba, when Israel’s establishment displaced about 750,000 Palestinians. Roughly 100,000 settled in Lebanon, initially in tents that later became informal concrete structures. In 1964 Lebanon required non‑Lebanese nationals to obtain work permits, and during the civil war (1975‑1990) many Palestinian groups fought in the country, leaving a legacy of mistrust.

Labor law changes in 2010 and 2021 reduced some permit fees and eased restrictions for Palestinian workers, but implementation has been limited. In February 2026 a new administrative mechanism allows Palestinian nursing students to apply for employment sponsorship, yet many experts say these legal changes do not alter the structural exclusion of Palestinians from the Lebanese labor market.

UNRWA recognizes 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Its Lebanon office reported about 222,000 Palestinians living in the country as of February 2025. Elia Ayoub, a Palestinian‑Lebanese researcher based in the UK, told Al Jazeera that Palestinians can study but cannot work in many top professions, cannot own land, and have no parliamentary representation. He said Palestinians are not recognized as an ethnic group in Lebanon’s sectarian system.

The country’s ongoing economic crisis, which began in 2019, has worsened in recent months. Lebanon supplies only a few hours of electricity per day, forcing many to use private generators. The World Bank projects inflation of up to 17.5 percent in 2026. These conditions have pushed many Palestinians to seek aid from UNRWA, but funding cuts in 2024 followed Israel’s unsubstantiated claim that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7, 2023 attacks. UNRWA denied the allegations. In July, UN Secretary‑General Antonio Guterres warned of a $100 million funding shortfall, and in September the agency projected a minimum $200 million deficit between the end of 2026 and the start of 2027.

With limited economic prospects, some Palestinians are attempting to reach Europe by sea. In 2022, at least 86 people died on a boat that left Lebanon and sank off Syria’s coast; many were Palestinians from the camps. The number of vessels leaving Lebanese shores increased after 2019, with many carrying Palestinians. Between 2020 and 2021 the number of boats crossing the Mediterranean doubled, and it rose by 121 percent in 2022, according to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

The European Union approved a support mission to Lebanon in late October, including maritime security governance. Najjar says camps are full of talk about people boarding boats to Turkey and then to Greece. Without economic relief on the horizon, he warns that Palestinians may continue to risk their lives in search of a better future.