Lebanon's State Shura Council decided this month to reverse an order issued in December allowing Palestinian refugees to work in trade-union regulated professions, after complaints that the order would encroach on the rights of Lebanese professionals and claims that the order was trying to pave the way for naturalizing Palestinian refugees.The reversal was made after the council accepted an appeal by the Maronite League, the head of the league, Neamatallah Abi Nasr, announced on Thursday, according to Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA).In December, amended regulations published by the country's Labor Ministry stated that Palestinians who were born in Lebanon and officially registered in the records of the Lebanese Interior Ministry will be allowed to work in professions that are in general limited to Lebanese citizens only, such as law, engineering and medicine, among others.The appeal filed by the Maronite League claimed that the labor minister had overstepped his authority when he issued a decision allowing Palestinians to access previously barred professions. The appeal had claimed that the decision violated the country's constitution, adding that the league was blocking attempts to "change the modern and historic face of Lebanon and attempting to impose a new demographic status quo," according to L'Orient Le'Jour.
Palestinians in Lebanon have no path to citizenship, unlike all other Arabs.
Palestinians in Lebanon cannot buy land.
Palestinians in Lebanon cannot expand their residences in overcrowded "refugee" camps.
Babies born in Lebanon to Palestinians cannot become citizens.
All of this is Lebanese law - laws specifically written to marginalize and oppress Palestinians as a separate group from all other Arabs.
This is the definition of apartheid.
Not once has Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch urged Lebanon to allow Palestinians who have lived there for seven decades become citizens. Even though they urge countries with other stateless minorities to give them a path to citizenship, when it comes to Palestinians, they instead agree that they should remain stateless until they can "return" to an Israel they never lived in and were never citizens of.
Amnesty hasn't written a full report on the plight of Palestinians in Lebanon since 2007. In 2006, it admitted that "state policies and practices in Lebanon discriminate, effectively on grounds of racial and national origin, against Palestinian refugees who reside in Lebanon." Meaning that Lebanon was guilty of apartheid against Palestinians in 2006 by its own definition, but it refused to use that word - and still does.
Which just proves that Amnesty doesn't really care about Palestinian rights unless it can blame Israel.
