University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing
Abstract
From 1948 onwards, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees settled in Lebanon, in both United Nations camps and private accommodation. Until today, various peace initiatives have taken place to solve this humanitarian crisis, to no avail. The Palestinians in Sidon have integrated into Lebanese society, become intertwined into the community, as both entrepreneurs and employees. Considering the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees, the consequences of the repatriation of the refugees needs to be considered. In this context, this research aims to understand the perceptions of the residents of Sidon on what they believe will happen to the economy of Sidon were the Palestinian refugees to leave, as well as their thoughts on what would happen to investment in Sidon, and what would happen to Palestinian owned properties in Sidon. The researcher interviewed 25 residents of Sidon, using stratified sampling and snowball sampling to find members of all aspects of Sidon society, in particular Lebanese, Palestinian refugees from 1948 and Palestinian refugees from 1967, using open ended questions. The data from the interviews was entered to a database and analysed thematically. Analysis of the data revealed that most of the respondents were very positive about the current contribution to the Sidon economy by Palestinian refugees. It is interesting to note that most of the respondents also believed that repatriation of the Palestinian refugees in Sidon would bring economical devastation to Sidon.
DOI
https://www.doi.org/10.5038/9781955833035
Recommended Citation
El Majzoub, R., & Howells, K. (2021). A qualitative study of perceptions of the residents of Sidon, Lebanon regarding the economic effect on Sidon with reference to repatriation of the Palestinian refugees. In C. Cobanoglu, & V. Della Corte (Eds.), Advances in global services and retail management (pp. 1–11). USF M3 Publishing. https://www.doi.org/10.5038/9781955833035
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
