https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/10/research-palestine-made-academic-pariah/
Rayyar Marron is author of Humanitarian Rackets and their Moral Hazards: The Case of the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon (Routledge, 2016).
When I suggested that aid incentivises rent-seeking and stasis among refugees in Lebanon, I was met with vituperation. The fact that I presented evidence harvested from on-the-ground inquiry was dismissed, as was my data. In academia, as I learned, ideology trumps evidence.
I wasn’t certain whether I should write this article. I watched from the sidelines the back-and-forth over the ANU’s rejection of Ramsay funding for a new centre for the study of Western civilisation. And I have a confidence problem. For the past few years I have suffered from academic ostracism, my research being treated as the intellectual equivalent of asbestos. When I dared suggest that some humanitarian programs to the Palestinians of Lebanon should be reconsidered if not stopped altogether because they are defrauded by refugees, and the competition to get hold of funds sparks violence in the camps, I received the most melodramatic objections from colleagues and friends. Their reactions ranged from a look of somebody encountering a bad smell to howls of offence and accusations that I was saying what I was saying because I come from Maronite Christian ancestry.
Nobody cared to ask about the data. And here I was, thinking I was working in an evidence-based discipline!
I now have pariah status amongst the cliques of leftist do-gooders, of which I once considered myself part, that inhabit social science departments at universities around the country and abroad. But I can be silent no longer. My heart is full and I must have my say.
In mid-2009 I returned to Australia after a year of field research in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut with the most fantastic data. I lived in the camp for three months that year, witnessing disputes over the implementation of UN-funded humanitarian projects among the various armed Palestinian factions that run the camps as autonomous territories. On a number of occasions a clan of refugees stood in the way of earthmoving equipment and stopped the construction of a new sewer pipe until they were paid off. This incident was symptomatic of the racketeering that has plagued the camps of Lebanon for decades. When any aid comes to the camps, factions or even gangs of refugees threaten the projects and demand to be paid protection money to stop disrupting. Once paid, they become the projects’ protectors, so no other group can attempt the same racket. As the Palestinians have long insisted on the principle of self-rule in the Lebanon camps, no external security force can intervene in the racketeering. This means a lot of money is wasted on bribes, and group rivalry can erupt into shoot-outs that destroy camp stability.
