Apartheid in Lebanon

Isn't it time for celebrities to boycott Lebanon?

The Palestinian Association for Human Rights (Shahed) announced in its annual report Tuesday that the situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is getting worse by the year, as their rights diminish in number and value daily.

According to the report, “the [poor] housing conditions in camps have not been addressed, and there is no local or international initiative on the horizon to improve them.” It described the camps as “a breeding ground for disease, home collapses, and a well of social problems.”

There are approximately 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, most of whom live in and around the country’s 12 camps. The camps are largely overcrowded and poorly provided for in terms of water and electricity.

The report called the pace of reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared, the northern camp that was mostly destroyed during a 2007 conflict between the Lebanese Army and Islamist group Fatah al-Islam, very slow.

The health situation in the camps is also deteriorating, according to the report, despite slight improvements in UNRWA’s health services. Education provision is dramatically declining, the report added, as problems in the education system have accumulated for 20 years now with the exception of a slight improvement at the high school level.

The report also said that in 2011, it had recorded no initiatives by the Lebanese government aimed at improving the conditions of Palestinian refugees.

Here's a list of concerts planned this summer in a state that has laws specifically to discriminate against hundreds of thousands of its Palestinian residents. Yet no one calls to boycott these bands because they are playing in Lebanon.

So either the boycotters against bands playing in Israel are hypocrites who don't care about Palestinian Arab rights, or....no, that's really the only explanation.

(h/t Andreas)