BEIRUT: It’s official. The state of Palestine has an embassy in Lebanon. Last month, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hoisted his country’s black, white, red and green flag above a building in the Beirut suburbs of Jnah, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s longtime delegation became Palestine’s embassy.

The upgrade in status came in advance of Palestine’s September bid for statehood at the United Nations. If the attempt succeeds, Palestine will become the 194th member state of the United Nations, where the PLO currently has observer status.

The achievement of statehood would certainly be accompanied by a certain amount of hand shaking, and more flag-raising. But on a practical level, what would it mean for the approximately 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon? And what would be the implications for the Lebanese, who have long had a fraught political relationship with the country’s Palestinians?

Experts say that at least in the short term, statehood is unlikely to change much on the ground. And some are concerned that statehood could actually be a negative for Lebanon’s Palestinians.

The establishment of a U.N. seat aside, state-building includes some basics. For starters, with a state comes bureaucracy, and its associated paperwork. Countries usually issue passports to their citizens. If a new Palestinian state issues passports to all Palestinians, what would they be worth?

“When you have a state you have to set the borders,” says Ghassan Said Abdallah, General Director of the Palestinian Human Rights Organization. “The borders are going to say [Palestine is] bordered by Israel on two sides at least.”

“So you have a state passport, but you can’t go back to the state. Because the Israelis will not agree” to allow Lebanon’s Palestinians to enter the state that will be in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, all areas occupied by Israel since the 1967 war.

And would the Lebanese be able to enter this new state? Ziad al-Sayegh, an expert on Palestinian refugees, says that “for me as a citizen I should have the capacity [to go to the West Bank and Gaza], but in Lebanon this is not only a legal issue. This is also political. Because of this it will be very difficult.”

He suggests that although the Tel Aviv airport could be avoided through entering via Jordanian borders, there “you will also see Israeli bases. Because of this [Lebanese entry] will not work. It needs time.”

States also tend to regulate property sales, and Lebanon is no exception. Palestinian refugees, who mostly live in the country’s 12 camps, are not allowed to own property. But Arab foreigners are allowed to hold property, so will citizens of the new Palestine have the same right?

Sayegh points to recent debates in Parliament on changing the ability of Arab foreigners to own property, and says that he doesn’t “think the question of property will be solved now, in these times.”

The ability to own property is tied to that of permanent resettlement, long a flashpoint for Lebanese who believe Palestinian naturalization will throw off the country’s fragile demographic balance. Palestinian jurist Souheil al-Natour says statehood may mean a mental shift in this debate: “I expect the change will be a psychological relaxing of the relationship between the Lebanese and the Palestinians. Having a state means reaching an … aim which will encourage Palestinian refugees to continue to their struggle for return.”

This is a positive, he believes, because the continued struggle “is a guarantee for the Lebanese that the problem of naturalization is finished.”

Without naturalization, will Lebanese Palestinians truly be like all Arab foreigners? The identification status of the Palestinian refugees, potential citizens of Palestine, remains very much unclear.

Abdallah is concerned they will become foreigners like any others, losing their refugee status, and Natour says the state “is not the solution of the problem of the refugees.”

Sayegh says perhaps the Palestinians will become “resident-refugees,” an as-yet untested identification.

Sayegh says that “until now there is no Memorandum of Understanding between UNRWA and the Lebanese government” that would reinforce UNRWA’s role and the status of the Palestinians as refugees. “This is totally unacceptable.”

In a statement to The Daily Star, UNRWA said that “the bid for statehood does not in and of itself really resolve the issue of the refugees who continue to live in exile, statelessness and dispossession.”

There are other longer-term concerns. Abdallah thinks that some of the refugees will be excluded from future return to the Palestinian state, as its borders will be based on 1967’s U.N. Resolution 242, including the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

“This is especially troubling for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon,” he says. “What if we are not from that land … what if we belong to Akka, Haifa and Jaffa?”

Abdallah is concerned that refugees who hail from within the borders of Israel, and not within the new state, may be barred from returning to Palestine if a return agreement is eventually reached.

In the end, the issues raised here are only the start of the legal, political, and diplomatic complications that are likely to arise if success comes some time later this month.

But many believe that in the short term at least, nothing much will happen at all.

Says Natour, “taking into consideration that this [new] state will continue to be under occupation, and it will take a long time of struggle [to change this] … there is a period of time which is going to pass without change in the situation … where we [still] don’t practically have a state.”

[“Statehood] could change some things for Abbas, like when he visits a country he will visit as the president,” says Abdallah.

“But for the refugees, nothing at all is going to change. I’m actually worried [it might] even get worse.”