Michael Jansen went to Bourj al-Barajneh, Beirut, to talk to people who had fled southern Lebanon
The camp is a square-kilometre built-up island in a suburban sea of high-rise blocks and wide avenues in south Beirut. To the north lies Haret Hreik, the stronghold of Hizbullah, known as "Dahiyeh", or the neighbourhood; the runways of Beirut International Airport stretch to the Mediterranean in the south-west.
If Israeli bomber pilots make a minute mistake in targeting, hundreds of citizens of Bourj could be killed very close to the site of the 1982 Sabra-Chatila massacre. Many here believe this is why Bourj has been spared so far in this war.
The border between Dahiyeh and Bourj is defined by a half-built flyover stretched above a broad concrete expanse.
The flats in the handsome white buildings of the Dahiyeh are empty, their windows blasted. Canvas curtains hang limply over balconies. There are no cars in the streets. All the shops are shuttered. Palestinian boys kicking a football stay close to the entrance of Bourj, which rises like a rugged brown cliff next to the flyover.
The Dahiyeh and the Bourj are two completely different worlds: the former is Lebanon, the latter the no-man's-land of Palestinian exile.
Some 18,000 people live in the Bourj, most of them Palestinians from Acre, Jaffa and Haifa, driven from their homes when Israel was established in 1948. They dwell in crude breeze-block rooms jumbled into two- and three-storey structures.
Since land is at a premium, there are few roads. People make their way from place to place on foot through a warren of narrow alleyways, roughly paved and slippery with water and slime. The buildings are knit together overhead by a cat's cradle of electricity and telephone lines. Small shops are stocked with tired vegetables, green apples and bananas.
To the Belqis clan, the Bourj represents safety. The home of the family of Asmahan Belqis, a fifth-floor apartment in a modern block, is in the Dahiyeh only five minutes' walk from the camp. Three families moved into the apartment with a 75-year-old aunt who has fled to the safety of Dubai, where her son lives and works.
Originally from the village of Kabri near Acre, the Belqis family came here on the first day of hostilities, when rockets began to rain down on the Dahiyeh. Sitt Asmahan, a cheerful matriarch wearing a headscarf and kaftan, says: "At first we believed the war would last only two or three days. Now we think it will last a long time. We get some help from associations and non-governmental agencies, some food and money. The electricity comes and goes, there is water from the wells every two days."
In spite of their plight, she asserts: "We like Hassan Nasrallah" [ the head of Hizbullah]. Her daughter Mirvat, in jeans and a T-shirt, retorts in good English: "We like peace." Mirvat, who holds a Palestinian refugee document, has been waiting for seven months for a visa for Germany, where her husband runs a restaurant. "Lebanese can travel everywhere, but not Palestinians."
Deeper into the Bourj, living in a three-room flat, are the Hamadeh family from Kfroun, near the embattled border town of Bint Jbeil. They are finishing a lunch of meat pizzas, cucumbers and tomatoes laid out on newspapers on the floor.
Children are everywhere. Teens smile politely from the sidelines and a curly-haired toddler with huge round eyes totters from person to person. Hussein Khazem Hamadeh, his wife Bahiya Darwish and their son, Hassan, and his wife and children are Lebanese Shias.
"We left when Israel destroyed the Litani bridge . . . after they told us to leave," says Hussein (68). "We were 16 people in two cars. We had many troubles on the roads."
The family is staying with a brother who is married to a Palestinian resident of the camp.
Hussein is a tobacco farmer. "I will lose my entire crop this year. I must be there to look after it, especially now. I sell it to the government for five million [ Lebanese liras, about $3,350]. We grow tobacco because we don't have much water in our village."
Hassan teaches maths in a private school in Kfroun, where he also owns a petrol pump. He is furious that Israel's onslaught on Lebanon continues. "The UN is useless because the US has all the power and supports Israel. The EU has not done anything wrong yet because it has not done anything."