Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon: Shatila Camp and the 1982 Massacre

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are the families, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from Palestine in 1948 and have lived in Lebanon ever since. Nearly 500,000 are registered there with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, but a UNRWA assessment in June 2025 put the number actually living in the country at about 248,000.

Many live in 12 official camps. The best known is Shatila camp in Beirut, the site, with the neighboring Sabra district, of the 1982 massacre. This guide sets out the numbers, the history of Shatila refugee camp, what happened in September 1982 and what life is like now.

How many refugees are in Lebanon?

Lebanon hosts two large refugee populations. The first is Syrian: the US State Department's 2023 religious freedom report cites UNHCR and other organizations estimating 1.5 million Syrian refugees in a country whose total population it put at 5.3 million.

The second is Palestinian, and much older. According to UNRWA figures reported by the European Union Agency for Asylum, nearly 500,000 Palestinian refugees were registered in Lebanon as of February 2025. Registration is voluntary and is not removed when people emigrate or die abroad, so the register overstates who is present. After a digital verification exercise in 2023 and 2024, UNRWA's June 2025 assessment was that around 248,000 Palestinian refugees were effectively living in Lebanon, an estimated 23,000 of them Palestinians who had fled from Syria.

More than 100,000 Palestinians reached Lebanon in 1948, mostly from the north of the country. Three and four generations on, their descendants are still classed as refugees. They are not eligible for Lebanese citizenship.

The 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon

UNRWA provides schools, health care and basic services in 12 recognized camps. Not all refugees live inside them; many live in nearby neighborhoods and informal gatherings.

• Beirut area: Shatila, Burj al-Barajneh, Mar Elias and Dbayeh
• Sidon area: Ain al-Hilweh and Mieh Mieh
• Tyre area: Rashidieh, Burj al-Shamali and al-Buss
• North Lebanon: Nahr al-Bared and Beddawi
• Beqaa: Wavel camp, in Baalbek

Shatila refugee camp: a short history

Shatila camp lies in the southern suburbs of Beirut, in the municipality of Ghobeiri. According to the Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, it began in 1949 when Abed Bisher, a refugee from the village of Majd al-Kroum in the Upper Galilee, pitched a tent on the edge of the city and gathered families from his own and neighboring villages. A Beirut notable, Saad al-Din Pasha Shatila, allowed them to use the land, and the camp took his name. The International Committee of the Red Cross recognized it as a camp in 1950 and UNRWA took it over a year later.

It started with about a dozen tents. For years the Lebanese authorities restricted permanent building, and families lined their tents with boards, stones and tins. In the 1970s the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) ran the camp and the surrounding district, including Sabra Street with its market, and the population grew quickly.

Shatila was badly damaged in the Israeli invasion of 1982 and again in the fighting known as the War of the Camps between 1985 and 1988, by the end of which it was almost entirely destroyed. It was rebuilt upward. In 2018 UNRWA counted 452 buildings on an area of roughly 70,000 square meters, about 17 acres, making it the most densely populated of the 12 camps.

Today its alleys are extremely narrow and its buildings tall, with high humidity, overcrowded homes and water, sewage and electricity networks that have not kept up. Its residents now include poor Lebanese families and Syrians as well as Palestinians.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre, September 1982

The Sabra and Shatila massacre (in Arabic, مجزرة صبرا وشاتيلا) took place between 16 and 18 September 1982. Israel had invaded Lebanon that June, and the PLO had withdrawn from Beirut by 1 September. On 14 September the Lebanese president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, a Christian militia leader allied with Israel, was assassinated. The Israeli army then moved into west Beirut and surrounded the area of the camps.

On the evening of 16 September, Phalangist militiamen entered Sabra and Shatila with the agreement of the Israeli command and killed civilians there until 18 September. Human Rights Watch records that the victims included infants, children, women and the elderly. They were Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians.

The number of dead has never been established. Israel's official inquiry, the Kahan Commission, noted that Red Cross representatives had counted 328 bodies, a figure that did not include those buried by families, and that Israeli military intelligence estimated 700 to 800 dead, which the commission thought might be closest to reality. Palestinian and other sources have put the toll far higher: the estimates most often cited range from about 2,000 to 3,500.

What did the Kahan Commission find?

The Kahan Commission, a three-member Israeli commission of inquiry headed by the president of the Supreme Court, reported on 8 February 1983. It concluded that direct responsibility for the killings rested on the Phalangist forces, and rejected the accusation that Israeli forces had taken a direct part.

It also found that Israel bore indirect responsibility, because those who decided to send the Phalangists into the camps should have foreseen the danger of a massacre and took no steps to prevent it. It held that Defense Minister Ariel Sharon bore personal responsibility and recommended that he resign or be removed, and that the director of military intelligence not continue in his post. Sharon gave up the defense ministry but stayed in the cabinet; he became prime minister in 2001.

In December 1982 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring the massacre an act of genocide. No one, Lebanese or Israeli, has been tried for the killings, and Human Rights Watch has said that the commission's findings are no substitute for criminal proceedings.

Life for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon today

Palestinians in Lebanon live with heavy legal restrictions. They are not eligible for citizenship, and Al Jazeera reported in 2022 that they are barred from as many as 39 professions and cannot own property. Most depend on UNRWA for schooling, health care and the upkeep of water and sanitation in the camps.

Poverty is the norm. UNRWA's 2025 emergency appeal reported that 80 percent of Palestine refugees in Lebanon were living below the national poverty line as of March 2023, and that the figure would be 93 percent without the agency's cash assistance. The war in Lebanon in late 2024 and UNRWA's funding shortfalls have added to the strain.

Looking for an orphanage in Beirut?

People who want to help children in the camps often search for an orphanage in Beirut. It helps to know how care works in Lebanon first. There are no state-run orphanages; the Ministry of Social Affairs pays private institutions, most of them affiliated with religious communities, to provide residential care.

The Lebanese legal research group Legal Agenda reported in a 2016 campaign that more than 24,700 children lived in such institutions and that around 90 percent of them were not orphans, but children whose families were too poor to keep them at home. It also criticized the lack of state supervision, and argued that policy should help families stay together rather than separate children from them because of poverty.

We do not recommend individual institutions and cannot vouch for any of them. If you plan to give to one, check that it is registered, ask how it is inspected and read our guide to donating safely, whose checks apply to any charity.

Where Fight for Palestine works

Fight for Palestine does not work in Lebanon. Our funding goes to emergency aid in Gaza, delivered through local partner teams: food, clean water, medical aid, shelter and support for children.

The two stories are connected. Gaza is also home to a great many families displaced in 1948, and the IPC food security analysis published in July 2026 reported that most people there remain displaced and unable to return home. You can read about that on our Gaza displacement page, see how to help orphans in Gaza, or give to the emergency Gaza appeal. For more on Lebanon itself, see Lebanon's people and religions.