SARKA VANCUROVA
Visual journalism, picture editing,
social documentary photography
Gaza Hospital: the last refuge
Palestinian refugees who survived Sabra and Shatila massacre, Syrian refugees who fled under the bombs from Aleppo or Hama, Bengalese and Sudanese migrants who slave away for starvation salaries, undocumented and sick Lebanese… Anyone disdained and discriminated in Lebanon finds a shelter in the Gaza building. Formerly cutting-edge hospital funded by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, plundered by militiamen from the Amal party during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), this eleven-floor decaying building located next to the Palestinian camp of Shatila in Beirut became a giant but dangerous squat: its ceilings sometimes collapse, its humidity provokes asthma and its promiscuity eats up the nerves of its inhabitants.
In a failed State which doesn’t recognize the Geneva convention regarding the status of refugee but hosts the biggest proportion of refugees in the world, Palestinians and Syrians are struggling for survival, back-to-back. The cutting of US aid for Palestinian refugees on one side, the international pressure to send Syrian refugees from Lebanon back to their country on the other, only makes matter worse. In the dark corridors of the unhealthy building, they intersect but never interact, Palestinians accusing Syrians of stealing their jobs, while the latter blames their hosts for xenophobic remarks and high rent. But they have one thing in common: both dream to leave their Lebanese unhealthy shelter.