In the Palestinian refugee camp of Baddawi, in Tripoli, North Lebanon, only the lucky and the desperate think of leaving the country. The lucky have enough money to put aside and bribe their way to Turkey; while the desperate, many of whom come from Syria's besieged Yarmouk camp, have only their luck to try on the Mediterranean Sea. There have been many Palestinian refugees that left Lebanon with fishing boats fromTripoli's shores, the deputy head of the Popular Committee in Baddawi camp, Abou Riad Shakli, told NOW. He said that Baddawi received approximately 1100 families from Syria. "Almost 200 of them traveled. Some of them managed to reach Turkey before they went on to Germany or somewhere else in Europe. Some of them are still in Greece. Some died on the way. They drowned," he explains. "They went using an inflatable boat through Tripoli; the boat was overloaded. When it reached the Turkish borders, it capsized, it was too heavy," he adds. Nine Palestinians from Yarmouk drowned in Turkish waters in mid-August after leaving Tripoli's shore with a fishing boat that carried 40 people. In the beginning of September, two Palestinians were arrested in Tripoli by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) for trying to smuggle 21 refugees to Turkey with a fishing boat. Getting caught is worse than living in a crowded refugee camp in Lebanon: they are deported. The 21 Palestinians from Syria who were caught by the LAF trying to leave Tripoli fishermen's harbor in early September were not from Baddawi, but the Popular Committee tried its best to save them. "The Lebanese system is clear. Every person without a residency permit is to be deported. We only interfered to tell them that people from Yarmouk are not able to go back there; that Yarmouk is besieged and these people can't enter it. This is when they gave him a period of 1 week to 10 days before they deported them," he explained.
