Quick Facts About Tel al-Zaatar Camp

The Nakba: Why Tel al-Zaatar Camp Existed

Tel al-Zaatar was born from the Nakba (Arabic for "catastrophe"): the mass expulsion of Palestinians during the occupation of Palestine in 1948. Roughly 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes, and more than 500 villages and towns were emptied and most of them destroyed.

The villages of the Upper Galilee and the Hula Valley, close to the Lebanese border, were emptied in 1948, along with the Bedouin encampments around Haifa. Their people crossed into Lebanon, and some of them were settled on a former British army base east of Beirut. For them, 1976 brought a second catastrophe: the loss of their camp, and of thousands of their people.

The Right of Return

The right of return is the central demand of Tel al-Zaatar's survivors and their descendants. It rests on several foundations in international law:

• UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (11 December 1948), paragraph 11, resolved that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid to those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property.
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 13) affirms everyone's right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to it.
• UN General Assembly Resolution 3236 (1974) reaffirmed the "inalienable right" of Palestinians to return to their homes and property.

For the families of Tel al-Zaatar, the demand is double: to return to al-Khalisa, Lazzaza and the villages of Palestine, and to know the fate of their missing and recover the remains of their dead.

History of the Camp (1949–1975)

Founding (1949–1952)

The League of Red Cross Societies set up the camp in 1949 on privately owned land that had served as a British army base during the Second World War, for 1,932 refugees from northern Palestine. Residents were grouped by clan and home village. In 1952, UNRWA took over services and replaced the tents with fourteen prefabricated barracks buildings. The Lebanese state connected homes to electricity and water in the mid-1950s.

Growth and restrictions (1950s–1969)

Beside Lebanon's largest industrial zone, the camp attracted workers, and in 1965 Palestinian Bedouin from the al-Maslakh area east of Beirut were moved there. Poor Lebanese from the south and the Bekaa, and Syrian workers, also settled in and around it. Through the 1960s, Lebanese military intelligence and the gendarmerie kept posts in the camp and imposed tight restrictions on its residents.

After the Cairo Agreement (1969–1975)

After an uprising in November 1969, the Cairo Agreement transferred control of the camps to the Palestinian factions. In 1973, the camp was shelled by army artillery during clashes. On 13 April 1975, a bus carrying residents of Tel al-Zaatar was ambushed in Ain al-Rummaneh, and 26 passengers were killed, an event widely seen as the spark of the Lebanese civil war.

The Siege of 1976

In early January 1976, militias of the right-wing Lebanese Front imposed a blockade on the camp, cutting off food, medicine and water. On 22 June 1976, the blockade became a total siege and a full-scale assault, carried out by the Kataeb (Phalanges), the Tigers militia of the National Liberal Party, the Guardians of the Cedars and other militias, with tanks and armoured cars. Syrian forces, which had entered Lebanon that June, provided political and military cover for the siege; historians differ on how directly they took part in the final assault.

• For 52 days, the camp was shelled with tens of thousands of shells; one source counts about 55,000.
• Water sources were destroyed, and residents drew water from a single tap and open wells under sniper fire; many died of thirst.
• Food ran out, and residents reportedly asked for a religious ruling allowing them to eat otherwise forbidden animals.
• Aid agencies were mostly barred, and the camp's Red Crescent hospital worked with almost no supplies.

The Fall and the Massacre (12 August 1976)

On 11 August 1976, an Arab League–mediated agreement provided for civilians to be evacuated under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross. On 12 August 1976, the day of the evacuation, the camp fell. As women and children were loaded onto trucks for West Beirut, militiamen pulled men and youths from the convoys and at checkpoints and executed many of them on the spot.

• Victims: there is no final toll. Estimates range from about 1,500 to more than 4,000 killed, most of them civilians. One study counts about 4,280 dead in total, about half during the siege and half during the fall and evacuation; another estimate puts the toll killed on the day of the fall alone at about 1,500.
• Wounded and missing: thousands were wounded, and hundreds remain missing to this day.
• Accountability: the 1991 general amnesty law, passed after the Taif Agreement ended the war, covered most wartime crimes. No one has ever been tried for the massacre.

For a full account of the massacre, see our article: The Tel al-Zaatar Massacre.

Destruction, Dispersal and the Missing

After the fall, the camp was looted and then razed by bulldozers. About 12,000 survivors were displaced. Most were moved to Damour in the Chouf, whose own residents had been expelled in January 1976; there, UNRWA opened four schools in 1977, and Beit Atfal al-Sumoud was founded in Beirut to care for about 300 children orphaned by the massacre.

The Israeli invasion of 1982 forced the survivors out of Damour, and they scattered across more than twenty locations in Lebanon. About 250 families settled beside Beddawi camp in the north, in a quarter of tin-roofed homes known as "Tel al-Zaatar" or the "New Tel al-Zaatar", which UNRWA does not recognise as a separate camp. Others went to the Bekaa, Baalbek, Shatila and other camps.

The fate of the missing remains an open wound. About 80 bodies were recovered three months after the fall and reburied in the Martyrs' Cemetery in Shatila; hundreds more are believed to lie under the ruins and in mass graves, and families' requests to recover their remains have been refused. Reports also speak of dozens of children taken from the camp and placed with foreign adoptive families or institutions.

Tel al-Zaatar Today

Nothing remains of the camp but traces among the warehouses and roads of the Dekwaneh industrial zone. After the Taif Agreement of 1989, the Lebanese state refused to rebuild it or allow its people to return. Its families now live in Beddawi, Shatila, Burj al-Barajneh and elsewhere, sharing the hardships of all Palestinians in Lebanon: no citizenship, bans on many professions and on owning property, Lebanon's economic collapse and UNRWA's funding crisis. They have also lived through the wars of 2024 and 2026 in Lebanon. In 2011, former residents founded an association that holds an annual commemoration every August, with a branch in Berlin.

Origin of the Name

Tel al-Zaatar means "Thyme Hill", after the wild thyme (za'tar) that grew on the hill where the camp was built. UNRWA officially called it Dekwaneh Camp, after the neighbouring suburb, but Lebanese identity documents and its own people always used the name Tel al-Zaatar. Another account links the name to a place of the same name in the Acre district of Palestine.

Location and Geography

The camp stood on a hill about 6 km east of downtown Beirut, in the Mount Lebanon Governorate, beside the largely Christian suburb of Dekwaneh and Lebanon's largest industrial zone. The nearby Jisr al-Basha camp met the same fate in 1976, as did the Nab'a quarter. Tel al-Zaatar's location in what became the militias' heartland in East Beirut left it surrounded once the civil war began.

Area

The camp covered about 56,645 m² (56.65 dunums) at its founding. As its population grew, it spread into the surrounding area, and on the eve of the war the camp and its surroundings held an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 people, including Lebanese and foreign workers.

Villages of Origin

Tel al-Zaatar's refugees came mainly from the north of Palestine, grouped by village and clan:

• Safed district: Al-Khalisa, Lazzaza, Salha, Hunin and Alma, and the ghawarneh of the Hula Valley
• Haifa area: the Bedouin of Arab al-Raml and Arab al-Iraqiyya, and families from villages near Haifa
• Acre district: families from villages near Acre
• Bedouin: Arab al-Tawqayn, and Palestinian Bedouin moved from al-Maslakh in 1965

Population and Demographics

Note: Registered refugees are not the same as residents. By the 1970s, the camp's population included poor Lebanese from the south and the Bekaa, including Shia families from Aitaroun and Ainata, as well as Syrian workers, many of whom also died in the siege.

Life in the Camp Before 1976

Homes in Tel al-Zaatar lacked indoor toilets, and open sewers caused constant sanitation problems; the camp had only one main road, about 200 metres long and partly paved. Most residents worked as farm labourers, in the nearby furniture, textile and plastics factories, at the port or in services, without social security or health insurance under Lebanese law. UNRWA ran five schools named after Palestinian cities, food distribution and medical services, and the Palestine Red Crescent Society opened a clinic in 1969 that later grew into a hospital. In the 1970s, PLO institutions ran small projects in the camp, such as sewing workshops.

Memory and Commemoration

Tel al-Zaatar became a symbol of Palestinian steadfastness and of the price paid by the refugees in Lebanon's civil war. Every August, its survivors and their children mark the anniversary of the fall. Beit Atfal al-Sumoud, founded for its orphans, still works in the camps of Lebanon today. The name of the camp lives on in the quarter beside Beddawi, in poetry and song, and in the memory of the families who still wait to learn what happened to their missing.

Frequently Asked Questions About Tel al-Zaatar Camp

Conclusion

Tel al-Zaatar began on a hill of wild thyme for the people of al-Khalisa, Lazzaza and the Hula Valley. For 27 years it was their home, until a 52-day siege and a massacre wiped it off the map in August 1976. Its people were scattered again, its dead lie in unmarked graves, and no one has been held to account. Yet its name endures, in their memory and in their demand for truth, justice and return.