page_title: Tyre, Lebanon
section_title: 1948 Palestinian exodus
hierarchical_section_title: Tyre, Lebanon / History / 1943 Lebanese independence / 1948 Palestinian exodus
caption_attribution_description: English: Four-color stencil graffiti portrait of the famous Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali, creator of the iconic Handala character, in Ramallah down town in 2012 on the 25th anniversary of his assassination.
context_page_description: Tyre is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, though in medieval times for some centuries by just a tiny population. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage's founder Dido. The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1984.
  The historian Ernest Renan noted:
  One can call Tyre a city of ruins, built out of ruins.
  Today Tyre is the fifth largest city in Lebanon after Beirut, Tripoli, Aley and Sidon, It is the capital of the Tyre District in the South Governorate. There were approximately 200,000 inhabitants in the Tyre urban area in 2016, including many refugees.
context_section_description: When the state of Israel was declared in May 1948, Tyre was immediately affected: with the Palestinian exodus – also known as the Nakba – thousands of Palestinian refugees fled to the city, often by boat. Many of them were given shelter by Imam Sharafeddin in the Jafariya School.
  
  On 17 July 1948, two Israeli Frigates shelled Tyre to attack a unit of Fawzi al-Qawuqji's Arab Liberation Army (ALA). When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted Operation Hiram in October 1948 to capture Upper Galilee from the ALA, thousands more Palestinians fled to Southern Lebanon. Many of them found refuge in Tyre. Subsequently, its position next to the closed border further marginalised the city, "which was already sidelined by Beirut and Sidon."
  Still in 1948, the Burj El Shimali camp was established next to the Tyre peninsula, mainly for displaced from Hawla, Lubieh, Saffuri, and Tiberias. The same year, an irregular camp was established at the Jal Al Bahar coastal strip in the Northern part of Tyre, mainly by Palestinian refugees from the village of Tarshiha. In Maachouk – 1 km to the West of Burj El Shimali – Palestinian refugees settled on agricultural lands owned by the Lebanese State. In the course of the 1950s, the Armenian refugees from El Bass were resettled to the Anjar area, while Palestinians from the Acre area in Galilee moved into the camp.
  Palestinian refugees played a key role in developing the citrus plantations in Tyre area, but were also competing for cheap labour opportunities in this field with the Lebanese precariat. On the other side, many of the teachers at the Jafariya Primary and Secondary school were well-educated refugees from Palestine, amongst them the famous cartoonist Naji al-Ali, who worked as a drawing instructor in the early 1960s and went on to create Handala, the iconic symbol of Palestinian identity and defiance.
  In 1950, the new building of the Jafariya School was inaugurated and named Binayat al-Muhajir – "Building of the Emigrants" – honouring the contributions from wealthy Tyrians in Africa. At the same time, the number of Lebanese from Tyre joining that diaspora increased once again, corresponding to yet another rise in poverty.
  In 1956, the Jafariya School was the platform for a guerrilla group of 25 Lebanese and Palestinian students to launch military strikes in Israel. However, at the end of that year their weapons were confiscated by the military intelligence and the Palestinian headmaster Ibrahim al-Ramlawi was arrested.
  It is unclear whether the 1956 Chim earthquake, which killed some 136 people in the Chouf District, caused any injuries or damages in Tyre as well.
  On 31 December 1957, Imam Sharafeddine, the founder of modern Tyre, died at the age of 85 and at a point of time when tensions escalated once again:
caption: Graffito of Naji Al-Ali in Ramallah, 2012
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