Fresh Graduates: Lebanon’s New Poor

A couple, who said they are leaving Lebanon for good, push their luggage at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport March 28, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A couple, who said they are leaving Lebanon for good, push their luggage at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport March 28, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
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Fresh Graduates: Lebanon’s New Poor

A couple, who said they are leaving Lebanon for good, push their luggage at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport March 28, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A couple, who said they are leaving Lebanon for good, push their luggage at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport March 28, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Engineers, lawyers, school teachers and holders of university degrees, whose parents have paid a fortune for their education, are now facing unemployment.

Available unemployment figures are frightening, while the real numbers are much greater than the declared data.

The latest of these figures indicates that about 36 percent of workers in the private sector have lost their salaries, and it is expected that the number of unemployed will exceed 500,000 due to the worsening financial crisis, which has been further exacerbated by the lockdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

Farouk, an activist in a charity group, says that the classification of the poor has changed, as they no longer only constitute the destitute class who cannot educate their children, but also degree holders, who were until recently considered from the middle class.

In a survey on living conditions issued by the General Directorate of the Central Statistics Department for the period between April 2018 and March 2019, the unemployment rate among young people with university degrees reached 37%. This rate is expected to rise this year, given that 32,000 students graduate from Lebanese universities annually.

Saiid, who refuses to disclose his real name spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat on a more painful experience. He is married, the father of two children and holds a degree in business administration. He was working for a commercial establishment with a salary that allowed him to obtain a housing loan years ago. However, he was surprised by his dismissal three months ago.

“When I was informed of my lay-off, I felt like the earth was shaking under my feet. Were it not for my family’s support and my faith in God, I would have committed suicide,” he bitterly says. “I cannot plan for the future, nor do I know how I will continue to pay my house loan or the education fees of my children.”

Hisham, 28, who holds a graduate degree in biochemical sciences, writes on his Facebook page: “After obtaining a respectable diploma… you start planning for your future and you get a decent job within your major. Overnight, you wake up to find that everything has disappeared.”

Hisham was dismissed from his job six months ago. He says that the small company he worked for has closed. He is trying to find work abroad, but the circumstances thwarted his efforts, and today, as other young Lebanese, he is waiting for an opportunity to emigrate.



Israeli Forces Kill 14 People in Gaza, Force New Displacement in the North

 A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip November 13, 2024. (Reuters)
A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip November 13, 2024. (Reuters)
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Israeli Forces Kill 14 People in Gaza, Force New Displacement in the North

 A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip November 13, 2024. (Reuters)
A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip November 13, 2024. (Reuters)

Israeli military strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israeli forces deepened their incursion into Beit Hanoun town in the north, forcing most remaining residents to leave.

Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.

Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue towards Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said.

Israel's campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fueled claims from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers.

"The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. Israel is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction," said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahiya, who arrived in Gaza City on Wednesday.

"North Gaza is being turned into a large buffer zone, Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing under the sight and hearing of the impotent world," he told Reuters via a chat app.

Saed was referring to the 1948 Middle East Arab-Israeli war which gave birth to the state of Israel and saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their hometowns and villages in what is now Israel.

NO PLANS FOR SETTLERS' RETURN

The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hardliners in his government have talked openly about going back.

It said forces have killed hundreds of Hamas fighters in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun during its new military offensive, which began more than a month ago. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad armed wing claimed killing several Israeli soldiers during ambushes and anti-tank rocket fire.

On Tuesday, the United States stressed at the United Nations that "there must be no forcible displacement, nor policy of starvation in Gaza" by Israel, warning such policies would have grave implications under US and international law.

Medics said five people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people outside Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, while five others were killed in two separate strikes in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip where the army began a limited raid two days ago.

In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, one man was killed and several others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike, while three Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, medics added.

Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year, Palestinian health officials say, and Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble, where more than 2 million Gazans are seeking shelter in makeshift tents and facing shortages of food and medicines.