Consociational Lebanon and the Palestinian Threat of Sameness

This article examines the Lebanese state's exclusion of Palestinian refugees by employing Zygmunt Bauman's notion of “strangers.” It argues that Palestinians are legally excluded because of the political rationale of the Lebanese consociational state. Palestinians are constructed as a demographic and cultural danger to the continuation of the Lebanese sociopolitical entity and Lebanese people. Palestinian strangers “must” be externalized from Lebanese society because they do not fit the administrative categories of consociation; instead, through sameness with the Lebanese, they bring these categories necessary for confessional power sharing into question.