This episode is the first part of a fascinating interview with Lebanese architect and urban planner Rouba Wehbe, a research associate at CERI (Sciences Po Paris) and IFPO (French Institute for the Near East) in Beirut. She defended her doctoral thesis in December 2024, which focused on Palestinian land outside of refugee camps in Lebanon.

The second part will be devoted to the issue of real estate acquired not by individuals, but by Fatah and the PLO since the 1960s in the Lebanese capital, and its transfer or sale today. Who benefits from this windfall, estimated at over $2 billion?

This is also an opportunity to discuss how the several hundred thousand Palestinian refugees in Lebanon since the Nakba manage, with varying degrees of success, to exercise their civil rights regarding work, housing, and movement in a Lebanese state that doesn't even recognize them as foreign workers. Between the prohibition on acquiring land or practicing certain professions, how can these refugees, whether or not they are dependent on UNRWA, be effectively treated as third-class citizens in a failing state that prioritizes security over their well-being?

For further reading, see the articles published in Arabic in 2025 in the daily newspaper Al-Akhbar: “تعقيدات الحيازة وتنازع الحقوق: قراءة في ملكيات منظمة التحرير في لبنان.”

Or the one published in 2021 for CAREP, “Being a Palestinian Property Owner in Lebanon: Between an Ongoing Political Conflict and the Challenges of an Exclusionary Real Estate Market.”

As for the second part, you can find it in a 2025 blog post by Rouba Wehbe, in English: “Remembering a Political Fief: The Republic Fakhani in Beirut (PLO Headquarters).” Where We Stand. https://urbanusspace.wordpress.com/20...

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Produced by Images d’Ici & d’Ailleurs 2026

Theme music:

Produced by: El-Funoun Palestinian Dance Troupe “Lover’s Hymn”

Palestinian folk tune