Now the Enemy Is Winter

As the first rains begin to fall, the plight of more than 160,000 Palestinian civilians in Lebanon's refugee camps is becoming more and more acute. TIME Correspondent David Jackson visited several of the camps, whose inhabitants were bracing themselves for the cold, wet months ahead. His report:

Roselah Hodrasadi, 37, clad in a long, soiled skirt and a black kerchief, is hacking away at the earth with a pick. She is trying to build a house. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has just given her a small plot of land, $500 in Lebanese currency, a canvas tent and ten bags of cement. She will need more than that to rebuild her family's life. Six months ago, the Ein el Hilweh refugee camp in which she lived was the home of nearly 25,000 people, a mixture of comfortable houses and rickety slums near Sidon on Lebanon's southern coast. The fierce battle fought there during the Israeli invasion reduced the camp to piles of tangled steel, broken concrete and seas of mud. Protests a resident: "It's a place for animals, not human beings."

If a bulldozer rakes up a wood plank or a cluster of twisted steel supports, someone will claim it and try to build a hut around it. There are women of all ages. There are children everywhere, who chase one another through the ruins and occasionally, oblivious to the danger, scramble into the shovels of the moving UNRWA tractors. One sees few men. Some are dead; others have been detained by the Israelis, who still make sorties into the camp in search of Palestine Liberation Organization suspects. One of those imprisoned was Hodrasadi's son Ibrahim, 18, who had recently undergone three abdominal operations. "They had no right to take him," she laments. "He was too weak to be a soldier."

Said, a lean, gray-haired man of 65, regards himself as one of the lucky ones. "Mine," he says, "may be the only family here with no sons in prison." Said is the father of eleven children, six of whom live with him in Ein el Hilweh. His house is virtually intact, though his neighbor's, 20 yds. away, was leveled during the invasion. Said and his family previously lived in Tel Zaatar, the Beirut camp that was destroyed by the Lebanese Christians in 1976. Later he lived in Damur, a Christian town that was seized by Palestinian and Lebanese Muslim forces during the civil war. "Every place I've lived is gone," he says. "Next time we want to go to Palestine. We can live side by side with the Israelis." His son Mahmoud, 31, a teacher who spent four months in an Israeli prison camp, disagrees. "No," he says. "Never."

Some refugees are grateful for the aid, while others try to sabotage the relief operation. At Ein el Hilweh, some recently supplied tents have been slashed or set afire, while new sewer pipes and water faucets have been broken or pilfered. "We've made some progress," says Dennis Brown, an American who works for UNRWA. "But it has been a few steps forward, a few steps backward the whole time."

Another problem stems from the Lebanese government's position that, while UNRWA may supply tents to the refugees or repair damaged shelters, it may not rebuild shelters that were completely destroyed. Two months ago, Israel said it would give UNRWA several hundred prefabricated shelters for the camps, but then withdrew the offer. Later it promised "up to 100" shelters for special hardship cases, but the shelters have not yet arrived. In nearby Sidon, several private Israeli firms have set up models of prefab houses, whose prices range from $3,000 to $13,500 and up. A salesman from Tel Aviv, lamenting that he has not yet made a sale, complains, "Everybody's scared. They all want to live here, but the Lebanese government has told them they can't stay." Outside, a woman from Ein el Hilweh has a different story. "How can we afford them?" she asks. "We don't even have enough money to get a ride into town."

At the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, where an estimated 800 Palestinians were massacred by Lebanese Christian militiamen last September,*the situation is, if anything, worse. Safiyeh, 20, lives with her family in a tiny room in the Shatila camp. Scarcely 100 yds. away is the mass grave, unmarked save for a few black flags, some dead flowers and the odd shoe or piece of clothing half buried in the rubble. A horse's leg, its flesh gone, pokes its way out of a nearby hillock. Safiyeh supports her parents and four children by doing housework for other refugees. Her husband Moklif, 33, was arrested by the Lebanese army after the massacre and has not been seen since. Safiyeh's older daughter, Mariam, 3, plays on the floor; she has no left hand. Safiyeh is young and pretty, but hobbled with responsibilities. When her mother is asked if she hopes Safiyeh can leave the camp for a better life, the old woman replies without hesitation, "We prefer her here. Without her, we cannot survive."

Because it is located north of Beirut, the camp at Beddawi is still protected by the P.L.O. Most of the 7,000 residents are displaced farmers from the south. They complain that they have trouble finding work in nearby Tripoli. The twelve members of the Zaatari family pay $ 150 a month for a dingy, windowless house on a narrow lane. They too have their chronicle of horrors, including those of their grandmother, now 90, who lost her husband and five children at Tel Zaatar during the civil war, and those of their great-aunt, who lost all ten of her children at Tel Zaatar.

As the elders tell their stories, a young P.L.O. soldier chats with one of the family's younger members, a shy, dark-eyed girl of about 17. When he is asked if she is his girlfriend, the soldier replies, in slight embarrassment: "No, I have no one." The grandmother interrupts: "When the killing stops, we can get around to putting the young couples together. Now there is no spirit for anything. The dead have taken it out of us." As she talks, a child of nine carries in a tray of glasses filled with sweet tea. Whether the talk is of love or death, the ritual of serving tea to guests goes on.

*At an Israeli government-sponsored news conference in Jerusalem last week, the head of one Lebanese Christian faction, Etienne Saqa, refused to say whether his group had participated in the massacre, but insisted to reporters: "We have the full right to deal with our enemies in Lebanon in the manner we find suitable."

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