In the evening of Monday 17 August the Work Brigade 2009 started from Rome. The Italians members have been reached during overnight stopover in Budapest and on arrival in Beirut by some other members from Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom, and on Tuesday 18 they went all together to Sidon to meet the comrades of the Lebanon-Palestinian Nashet association. In the morning of Wednesday 19 the Brigade entered into the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh.
The brigade came back to Europe in the morning of Friday 4 September.

Our project has attracted the interest of the Lebanese media, and our Brigade has been interviewed by several newspapers, including Al-Akhbar, Daily Star, Addiyar and Al-Binaa and by the Al-Manar TV.

Thursday, September 3rd – 11.00 PM, Refugee Camp of 'Ein el-Hilweh

This is our last evening here, we only have two hours left in the camp and then we will have to leave to the airport in Beirut to take the plane which will carry us to Budapest and then back to Italy, Austria, Germany and England.

The opening of the building just finished, we spent the whole day organizing it and we think it went really well, we had a picture slideshow, some music, Dabka dancers and an “Italian” buffet (which was cooked by three of our volunteers). The small party was attended by personalities of the camp and a few journalists.

What happened in the last days: the renovation works were completed, they still need some small touching up but we can say they are 95% complete. We have repaired and painted the outside walls in cream white, had the canopy built on the yard, fixed the doors and painted them red, and fixed a sign on the front of the building which reads, “Sumud Youth Center” and the names of the two associations (Nashet and Sumud) and looks really nice on the renovated walls.

While we were working we noticed a growing interest in our activities, with some PFLP-area politicians and also some neighbours coming in to see how the renovation was going.

Our other activities: we had meetings with representatives of most of the political groups in the camp: a special one with PFLP, which also owns the building we renovated, in which we thanked them for the hospitality and for giving us the chance to implement our project; then with representatives of Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and with the coordinator of Islamic parties.

We also had one day's trip to the south, where we visited the el-Khian prison, built in 1988 by the Israeli occupiers, taken back by the Resistance in 2000 and changed into a museum, and then bombed by Israeli planes in 2006 – to hide the proof of their crimes, we have been told, and indeed we have seen the cells where the prisoners were held in inhuman conditions and the instruments of torture used by the Israeli. We also visited the ruins of the Beaufort crusader castle, used by Israeli soldiers during the occupation and theatre of important clashes between the occupiers and the Resistance (in particular the Palestinian one).

On our last day we had a short formal meeting with a representative of the municipality of Saida.

Unfortunately despite our repeated attempts we did not manage to get the permission to enter Nahr el Bared camp.

Saturday, August 29th – 3.00 AM, Refugee Camp of 'Ein el-Hilweh

We have now been 10 days in the camp.

Every one is okay, but we're also really tired. Everyday we work to the renovation in the morning, then some more in the afternoon, and we often have activities in the late afternoon and the evening. But of course we also feel the need to spend time with each other and chat, and usually we're free only after dinner: therefore we tend to go to bed quite late and sleep only a few hours.

We now have an internet connection inside the building (we are staying in the same building we're working on), but electricity (“karaba” in Arabic, a word everybody has learned) tends to come and go at unlikely times during the day, and we only have one laptop computer.

The renovation work is going on, even if we are a little late: we have finished painting most of the rooms, the electricity infrastructure is finished, and the bathroom is well on its way. We have finished re-painting the windows and the doors. We have also fixed the low walls at the entrance, but most of the work on the exterior is still to do. A professional will come to build a canopy on the main yard and give it a concrete floor. Then we will start working on the outer walls. We lack a little coordination but all in all we think we're doing fine.

Cultural activities: we have had a meeting with two representatives of the Popular Committee, which is an adminstrative body of the camp. They explained how the Committee works and what its functions are. The Committee is not elected but composed of representatives of the PLO parties who are appointed by the parties themselves, and therefore is not universally considered as legitimate. The so-called pro-Syrian factions also have a different committee of their own.

We also visited the al-Nidaa hospital, to which a new wing is being added, and on our way there and back saw a little more of the camp, the streets, the narrow alleys, and the main market, which is incredibly lively and crowded.

On friday we participated in the commemoration for Abu Ali Mustafa, the former secretary general of PFLP, who was assasinated by Zionists in 2001.

Planned activities: tomorrow we will meet representatives from the main groups in the camp (Fatah, Hamas, Salafis).

On Sunday we will have a trip to the south of Lebanon and visit some significant places related to the 2006 Israeli attack.

In addition we already asked for permission to enter the refugee camp Nahr el Bared near Tripoli, which was destroyed by the Lebanese military two years ago.

Saturday, August 22th – 1.00 AM, Refugee Camp of 'Ein el-Hilweh

Our work brigade has now been in Lebanon for four days, and in the camp for two days.

Upon our arrival, permission to enter the camp was refused by the Lebanese military even though all the bureaucratic steps had been taken: the reason given by the military was they are not used to such large groups asking permission to enter, but we suppose that political matters also played a role.

While we were staying outside of the camp, with the help of our comrades in Nashet we managed to arrange two meetings with Lebanese political parties.

The first one was with the Popular Democratic Party, a Marxist-Leninist party with a clear anti-imperialist outlook which supports resistances worldwide, and to whom of course the Palestinian Resistance is a crucial point; they also have been carrying on a cooperation with Lebanon's National Resistance. We presented our project to them, and they proposed to send a delegation of their comrades into the camp to participate in the work for a day.

The second one was with Osama Saad, leader of the Nasserist Popular Party and former MP, with whom we also spoke about the importance of the Palestinian Resistance and of international cooperation in its support, and to whom we presented our common project with Nashet, our association Sumud, its activist, grassroots nature and its differences with mainstream NGOs which get support from Western institutions.

On the second day we managed to enter the camp of Ein el-Hilweh and visit the building that we are going to renovate; together with Nashet we checked its condition and started preparing and organizing the renovation work: the walls and roof which needed fixing had already been taken care by them.

Then the brigade started its common work with the Nashet volunteers. Up to now (fourth day) we have prepared the walls, the windows and the doors for painting. We also started to renovate the electrical infrastructure. All the volunteers (from Italy, Austria, Germany, England, and the Palestinians) cooperated in the works and created a joyful and motivated atmosphere. In our free time we stayed together, chatting about various subjects, sharing experiences and learning a little of each other's language.

We also participated in cultural-political activities: on the third day we had a workshop on the rights of Palestinians in Lebanon led by a representative of the Youth Advocacy Policy, an NGO which focuses on this issue and acts on a legal and informational level against the violations of such rights, while on the fourth day we visited the graves of the martyrs inside the camp and took part in a discussion on the history of the Palestinian question from the Nakba to this day lead by Zafer al-Khateeb, chairman of Nashet.

We plan to continue our work on the building according to our possibilities as volunteer associations, and to have more cultural and political activities aimed at creating mutual understanding between the volunteers and greater political awareness (hopefully we will manage to visit the south border of Lebanon to witness the effects of the last Israeli attack).