5) Another problem facing Palestinian workers is the lack of social security. According to paragraph 3 clause 2 of Article 9 of the Social Security Law: " On the basis of this law, foreigners that work in Lebanon territory do not benefit from any or all forms of social security, except on condition that the country to which they belong treats Lebanese citizens according to the principle of reciprocity in the field of social security. In this case, we can note that prior to the occupation of their land, Palestinians were subject to the British Mandate, which established special laws for Palestine. On 15 February 1965, the Lebanese Social Security Treasury published a decision (Number 89) requesting the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to express its opinion on the legal process that the Treasury should adopt regarding benefits to Palestinian laborers in the form of family compensation. The Legal and Advisory Board of the Ministry of Justice replied with decision Number 667\3 (14 December 1966), rejecting on the legal grounds the right of Palestinian workers to benefit from social security in the section of family compensation. In its decision, the Board explained that: "It is unlikely that there had been a "Palestinian Authority", before the outbreak of the war of 1948 with a legal system in place did treat Lebanese with equivalence regarding social security.

The Lebanese economy is almost completely closed to Palestinians. This existing trend has coincided for an extended time with four other negative developments: 1) a contraction of employment, free services, and assistance provided by the PLO and the resistance; 2) a decrease in the assistance and services provided by UNRWA; 3) a decrease in aid provided by non-governmental organization (NGOs), states, and foreign governments that consider the struggle in Lebanon to have ended; and 4) the collapse after the Gulf War of both public and private funding from

Palestinians working in the Gulf. The most dangerous of these developments, without a doubt, is the reduction of the number of employees and services provided by the PLO. These reductions affect a large number of people and demonstrate the failure of the PLO to implement any national project to re-empower its demobilized fighters or to generate income for them and their families.

The effects of the changes are not surprising. According to one director of an NGO, nearly 60% of all Palestinians in Lebanon live under the poverty line, as defined by the United Nations.

A new Lebanese Labor Minster Trad Hamade adopted a resolution, mentioned in memorandum number 1/67 dated 27/6/2005, starting the exception of Palestinian refugees registered in Lebanon "from the ruling of the first Article of decree 1/79 dated 2/6/2005 (regarding the work of foreigners).Although the resolution gave the Palestinian workers the opportunity to work in specific domains like company employee, accountant, building janitor and such; it did not change the current employment potential of the qualified Palestinian to work in liberal professions; those Palestinians who graduated from universities with degrees in fields that have orders that any practitioner has to adhere to in order to work in the domain. And the respective statutes specifically require the applicants to having had the Lebanese nationality for at least ten years. There are 21 such orders.
- The Palestinians eligible to benefit from the new decree are still required to get a work permit from the ministry, and pay its fees.
- The decree did not affect the discrimination practiced against Palestinian refugees through the compulsory paid adherence to social security, whose benefits are withheld in the absence of reciprocity. Since Lebanon did not recognize the State of Palestine and exchange ambassadors with it; and since the judiciary standards of the Palestinian British-colonial period of pre-1948 guarantees for the Arabs and the Lebanese among them, were not deemed satisfactory; hence the unfulfilled reciprocity condition still stands in the way of normalizing the situation of Palestinians in the Lebanese social security system.
- Some see that the resolution is set to raise the Palestinian issue in Lebanon, as another factor of the pressures to implement UN resolution 1559 inasmuch as it concerns refugee camps and their security/ arms through the suggestion that it will help alleviate and encompass the Palestinian human suffering in return for disarmament. But this issue is controversial par excellence as each aspect of it lends itself to separate and intertwined interacting factors that don’t promise with a solution any time soon. And the risk involved in trying to relate between the two issues pushes towards what the enemies of Lebanon and Palestine consider an explosive issue that helps in giving the Palestinians an even more negative role, as some politicians have done many a time. And that has turned life in the refugee camps of the worst and meanest under the pretence that resolving the humanitarian issue would lead Palestinians to hold on to Lebanon and settle in it as an alternative to their homeland. But this calculated usage does not fool anyone. On the contrary, the media has pointed to the need to deal with the issue of refugees without “lies and hypocrisy as the Palestinians have been through the worst without social services, work opportunities, and without safety and stability. Several camps have in addition been turned into closed areas, where wanted people thrive, carrying the blame for crimes committed in different areas of Lebanon.”

Few questions the authority of the minister in issuing the decree, but some have raised the issue of the timing wondering why it was issued during the last days of the ministry, usually reserved for the settling of urgent matters. But although some newspapers said that the Minister had signed the decree in 3/6/2005 and postponed announcing it to better study its repercussions, what is clear from the consequences is that such a debate is everybody’s right and not exclusive to some committees. The hope to succeed in carrying on with the decree was rather enhanced with the new ministry that International and regional pressures regarding violations of the human rights of Palestinians in Lebanon undoubtedly had a role in the urge to remove the stigma from Lebanon’s reputation and replace it with a more positive one also helps establish the right to work on Lebanese territories.

Many Palestinians see that the struggles of societies and organizations especially the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine that carried forth the social, economical and humanitarian Palestinian needs for years. We can add here that the factor is the fact that Minister Trad Hamade is known for his affiliation with Hezbollah which has always advocated the rights of Palestinians in Lebanon.

The rather positive atmosphere of the recent meetings between Lebanese and Palestinian leaders manifesting through high ranking visits of Palestinian leaders to Lebanon; the meeting of Abu Mazen with Lebanese Prime Minister during the Brazil summit; the consultation and will to cooperate in order to resolve the demands of working, and property rights and construction needs; paving the way for establishing a new kind of relationship between the two people. Technically, the resolution can be the manifestation of an answer to the request presented in two memorandums, one from PLO, and the other from the Democratic Front to promote the bilateral relations after the re-opening of PLO office in Beirut May 2006.

But Palestinians are practically skeptical after the deterioration between the Lebanese political parties lately.
1- the decree objectively presented the need for it to be pursued in all the issues related to working in the private sector and the need to amend and rectify obstacles in the programs applied in the social security. The Palestinians are distinguished through this decree and exempted from the need for a prior permit from the Minister to practice a non-prohibited job, and the fees of the permit are lower than those any foreigner has to pay.
2- Attempt to organize the field of work: The market need to use the Palestinian labor came as part of efforts to fill the gap produced by massive exit of Syrian workers. The minister’s decision comes after he accomplished a new Lebanon-Syrian organizational labor agreement, and another Egyptian-Lebanese one. The core of the matter is to expand this arrangement to all foreign labor.
3- The Palestinians always called for the implementation of the Casablanca Protocol of 1965 signed between Arab countries that committed these countries to treat Palestinian refugees on the same footing as their own people in what concerns hiring and employment, the right to enter and exit the country, and the right to acquire needed travel documents and visas.