Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian youth facing a future dominated by fear, anxiety and mystery

Syrian refugees load their belongings onto a vehicle as they prepare to be evacuated from the southern Lebanese village of Shebaa on July 28, 2018, to return back to Syria. (AFP)
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Updated 15 November 2021
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Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian youth facing a future dominated by fear, anxiety and mystery

  • Three-year study reveals scale of suffering

BEIRUT: Youths in marginalized settings in Lebanon, especially in poor areas, Palestinian camps and Syrian refugee gatherings, are facing a future dominated by fear, anxiety and mystery.

This has been proven by a three-year study conducted by the Lebanese Association for Educational Studies, in partnership with the American University of Beirut’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs.

The research team submitted the results of the study in a Zoom conference, attended by Arab News, and revealed the scale of suffering of the youth in Lebanon.

Dr. Kamal Abu Chedid, dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences at Notre Dame University, said: “The answers of the youth regarding their marginalization settings reflected their deep suffering and distress, and especially those of refugees, who believed that family expectations are closer to reality than general expectations, which they considered as wishes and dreams.”

In the past decade, Lebanon was the main Arab country that Syrians resorted to as they fled the war at home.

Lebanon did not recognize them as refugees, but considered them to be displaced people to avoid the recurrence of a past experience when Lebanon received Palestinian refugees over 70 years ago.

Lebanon — home to 6 million people — hosts the highest number of refugees per capita in the world with 865,331 Syrians officially registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to December 2020.

Lebanese authorities have estimated the number of Syrian refugees residing in Lebanon informally at 1.5 million, living in camps or gatherings, while others have integrated into society.

Those living in random camps are estimated at around 600,000.

According to a population census in 2017, the number of Palestinian refugees living in camps and gatherings was 174,422 refugees, 7.2 percent of whom were illiterate.

The number of Palestinian refugees between three to 13 years old who received education was estimated at 93.6 percent, and the unemployment rate was estimated at 18.4 percent.

With the deterioration of the living and economic conditions in Lebanon and the collapse of the local currency, the Lebanese youth have been severely affected, leaving over 1 million people unemployed.

Dr. Ghada Jouny, professor of education at the Lebanese University, said: “The Syrian youth (refugees) are deprived of education and job opportunities and are experiencing authoritarianism within their families and are trying to rely on themselves but end up feeling anxious and hopeless, with a negative perception of the bad political situation, lack of education and job opportunities in Lebanon. The Syrian youth do not see a good future for them in Lebanon. They are eating and drinking but are not going forward.”

Syrian youth feared more wars would erupt in the region, Jouny added. “They fear they will be forced to perform compulsory military service in Syria, which makes it hard for them to envision a future for them in their own country.”

The professor also said that Syrian youth dreamt of going back to Syria and getting their old lives back, but feared being forced to return to a country “drowning in corruption” and instead preferred to migrate to Europe, the US, Canada or Sweden.

They were also scared to project their future, said the professor.

Dr. Adnan Al-Amine, a professor at the Lebanese University, considered youths were living in marginalized environments and facing a reality that was too hard and too tight for their expectations. “Immigration has become their utmost ambition for the future. The Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian youth are all feeling the same: Anxiety, fear and mystery dominating their future.”

Professor of sociology at the Lebanese University Dr. Maryz Younes said marginalized Lebanese youth dreamt of immigration, and the 260,000 passports issued by the General Directorate of Public Security until the end of August reflected the way the Lebanese youth saw their future in Lebanon.

“The security situation constitutes a major anxiety factor, along with the state’s weakness and the same politicians remaining in power.”

Lebanese youth were looking to get married without having children or not to get married at all because they were unable to provide for a family in Lebanon. “At the same time, some continue to depend on their parents with a tendency toward the patriarchal culture. Completing studies has become a priority as the youth is seeking immigration, some even thinking of not returning to Lebanon, to be able to live a decent life without losing hope in the future,” Younes added.

 


Turkiye’s Erdogan says Israel attacks aimed to sabotage Iran nuclear talks

Updated 12 sec ago
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Turkiye’s Erdogan says Israel attacks aimed to sabotage Iran nuclear talks

  • Around 40 diplomats are slated to join the weekend gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Israel’s attacks on Iran right before a new round of nuclear talks with the United States aimed to sabotage the negotiations, and it showed Israel did not want to resolve issues through diplomacy.

Speaking at a foreign ministers’ meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, Erdogan urged countries with influence over Israel not to listen to its “poison” and to seek a solution to the fighting via dialogue without allowing a wider conflict.

He also called on Muslim countries to increase their efforts to impose punitive measures against Israel on the basis of international law and United Nations’ resolutions.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi earlier arrived in Istanbul on Saturday, Tasnim news agency reported, for a meeting with diplomats to discuss Tehran’s escalating conflict with Israel.

Around 40 diplomats were expected to join the weekend gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), as Israel and Iran continue to exchange missile strikes.

“The Foreign Minister arrived in Istanbul this morning to participate in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Foreign Ministers’ meeting,” Tasnim reported.

Araghchi met with his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany in Geneva on Friday.

“At this meeting, at the suggestion of Iran, the issue of the Zionist regime’s attack on our country will be specifically addressed,” said Araghchi, according to the news agency.

Israel began its assault in the early hours of June 13, saying Iran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, triggering an immediate retaliation from Tehran in the worst-ever confrontation between the two arch-rivals.

Earlier on Friday, Araghchi said Tehran was ready to “consider diplomacy” again only if Israel’s “aggression is stopped.”

The ministers are expected to release a statement following their meeting, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu said.


UN urges more support to speed up Syria refugee returns

Updated 21 June 2025
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UN urges more support to speed up Syria refugee returns

  • According to UNHCR, some 13.5 million Syrians remain displaced internally or abroad
  • Wide scale destruction, including to basic infrastructure, remains a major barrier to returns

DAMASCUS: UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi has urged more international support for Syria to speed up reconstruction and enable further refugee returns after some 14 years of civil war.
“I am here also to really make an appeal to the international community to provide more help, more assistance to the Syrian government in this big challenge of recovery of the country,” Grandi told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of a visit to Damascus.
Syrians who had been displaced internally or fled abroad have begun gradually returning home since the December overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad, whose brutal repression of peaceful anti-government protests in 2011 triggered war.
But the wide-scale destruction, including to basic infrastructure, remains a major barrier to returns.
Grandi said over two million people had returned to their areas of origin, including around 1.5 million internally displaced people, while some 600,000 others have come back from neighboring countries including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkiye.
“Two million of course is only a fraction of the very big number of Syrian refugees and displaced, but it is a very big figure,” he said.
According to UNHCR, some 13.5 million Syrians remain displaced internally or abroad.
Syria’s conflict displaced around half the pre-war population, with many internally displaced people seeking refuge in camps in the northwest.
Grandi said that after Assad’s toppling, the main obstacle to returns was “a lack of services, lack of housing, lack of work,” adding that his agency was working with Syrian authorities and governments in the region “to help people go back.”
He said he discussed the importance of the sustainability of returns with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani, including ensuring “that people don’t move again because they don’t have a house or they don’t have a job or they don’t have electricity” or other services such as health.
Sustainable returns “can only happen if there is recovery, reconstruction in Syria, not just for the returnees, for all Syrians,” he said.
He added that he also discussed with Shaibani how to “encourage donors to give more resources for this sustainability.”
With the recent lifting of Western sanctions, the new Syrian authorities hope for international support to launch reconstruction, which the UN estimates could cost more than $400 billion.


Water levels plummet at drought-hit Iraqi reservoir

Updated 21 June 2025
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Water levels plummet at drought-hit Iraqi reservoir

  • Visible cracks have emerged in the retreating shoreline of the artificial lake, which lies in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and was created in the 1950s

DUKAN: Water levels at Iraq’s vast Dukan Dam reservoir have plummeted as a result of dwindling rains and further damming upstream, hitting millions of inhabitants already impacted by drought with stricter water rationing.
Amid these conditions, visible cracks have emerged in the retreating shoreline of the artificial lake, which lies in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and was created in the 1950s.
Dukan Lake has been left three quarters empty, with its director Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq explaining its reserves currently stand at around 1.6 billion cubic meters of water out of a possible seven billion.
That is “about 24 percent” of its capacity, the official said, adding that the level of water in the lake had not been so low in roughly 20 years.
Satellite imagery analyzed by AFP shows the lake’s surface area shrank by 56 percent between the end of May 2019, the last year it was completely full, and the beginning of June 2025.
Tawfeeq blamed climate change and a “shortage of rainfall” explaining that the timing of the rains had also become irregular.
Over the winter season, Tawfeeq said the Dukan region received 220 millimeters (8.7 inches) of rain, compared to a typical 600 millimeters.


Upstream damming of the Little Zab River, which flows through Iran and feeds Dukan, was a secondary cause of the falling water levels, Tawfeeq explained.
Also buffeted by drought, Iran has built dozens of structures on the river to increase its own water reserves.
Baghdad has criticized these kinds of dams, built both by Iran and neighboring Turkiye, accusing them of significantly restricting water flow into Iraq via the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Iraq, and its 46 million inhabitants, have been intensely impacted by the effects of climate change, experiencing rising temperatures, year-on-year droughts and rampant desertification.
At the end of May, the country’s total water reserves were at their lowest level in 80 years.
On the slopes above Dukan lies the village of Sarsian, where Hussein Khader Sheikhah, 57, was planting a summer crop on a hectare of land.
The farmer said he hoped a short-term summer crop of the kind typically planted in the area for an autumn harvest — cucumbers, melons, chickpeas, sunflower seeds and beans — would help him offset some of the losses over the winter caused by drought.
In winter, in another area near the village, he planted 13 hectares mainly of wheat.
“The harvest failed because of the lack of rain,” he explained, adding that he lost an equivalent of almost $5,700 to the poor yield.
“I can’t make up for the loss of 13 hectares with just one hectare near the river,” he added.


The water shortage at Dukan has affected around four million people downstream in the neighboring Sulaimaniyah and Kirkuk governorates, including their access to drinking water.
For more than a month, water treatment plants in Kirkuk have been trying to mitigate a sudden, 40 percent drop in the supplies reaching them, according to local water resource official Zaki Karim.
In a country ravaged by decades of conflict, with crumbling infrastructure and floundering public policies, residents already receive water intermittently.
The latest shortages are forcing even “stricter rationing” and more infrequent water distributions, Karim said.
In addition to going door-to-door to raise awareness about water waste, the authorities were also cracking down on illegal access to the water network.
In the province of roughly two million inhabitants, the aim is to minimize the impact on the provincial capital of Kirkuk.
“If some treatment plants experience supply difficulties, we will ensure that there are no total interruptions, so everyone can receive their share,” Karim said.


Israel military says hit Hezbollah site in south Lebanon

Updated 21 June 2025
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Israel military says hit Hezbollah site in south Lebanon

  • The military said the site was used by Hezbollah “to advance terror attacks against Israeli civilians”

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said Saturday its navy hit a Hezbollah “infrastructure site” near the southern Lebanese city of Naqoura, a day after Israel’s foreign minister warned the Lebanese armed group against entering the Iran-Israel war.
“Overnight, an Israeli Navy vessel struck a Hezbollah ‘Radwan Force’ terrorist infrastructure site in the area of Naqoura in southern Lebanon,” the military said in a statement.
The military said the site was used by Hezbollah “to advance terror attacks against Israeli civilians.”
In a separate statement on Saturday, the military said it had “struck and eliminated” a Hezbollah militant in south Lebanon the previous day, despite an ongoing ceasefire between both sides.
In a statement carried by the official National News Agency, Lebanon’s health ministry said late on Friday that one person was killed in a “strike carried out by an Israeli enemy drone on a motorcycle” in the same south Lebanon village.
The November ceasefire aimed to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which sparked months of deadly hostilities by launching cross-border attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinian ally Hamas following its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Lebanon’s army, which has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure as part of the truce, said earlier in June that the Israeli military’s ongoing violations and “refusal to cooperate” with the ceasefire monitoring mechanism “could prompt the (Lebanese) military to freeze cooperation” on site inspections.


Israeli military kill two Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders

Updated 21 June 2025
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Israeli military kill two Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders

  • Veteran commander, Saeed Izadi, led the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force
  • The Quds Force built up a network of Arab allies known as the Axis of Resistance

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that the military had killed a veteran commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ overseas arm, in a strike in an apartment in Iran’s Qom province.

The commander, Saeed Izadi, led the Palestine Corps of the overseas arm, or Quds Force, Katz said in a statement.

The Israeli military later said that it killed a second commander of the Guards’ overseas arm, who it identified as Benham Shariyari, during a strike on his vehicle overnight in western Tehran.

It said the commander “was responsible for all weapons transfers from the Iranian regime to its proxies across the Middle East.”

Shariyari supplied missiles and rockets launched at Israel to Hezbollah, Hamas and Yemen’s Houthis, according to the Israeli military.

There was no confirmation from the IRGC on the killing of the two commanders. The Quds Force built up a network of Arab allies known as the Axis of Resistance, establishing Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982 and supporting the Palestinian militant Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

But the Iran-aligned network has suffered major blows over the last two years, as Israeli offensives since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel have weakened both the Palestinian group and Hezbollah.

Katz said Izadi financed and armed Hamas during the initial attacks, describing the commander’s killing as a “major achievement for Israeli intelligence and the Air Force.”

Izadi was sanctioned by the US and Britain over what they said were his ties to Hamas and Palestinian militant faction Islamic Jihad, which also took part in the October 7 attacks.