By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent
NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters) - Sadeq Sadeq gazed at bulldozers clearing rubble from the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, pulverised in battles between the Lebanese army and Islamist militants in 2007.
"My house was there," said the 47-year-old construction foreman, pointing to heaps of concrete and twisted steel.
Reconstruction at Nahr al-Bared is finally due to begin on March 9, even though many of the 30,000 refugees who lost their homes remain sceptical the camp will indeed be resurrected.
"Maybe they will give me a house but I don't know when -- two years, six years?" said Sadeq, breaking off his work at a grimy building site in a less heavily damaged area nearby.
For years, he plied his trade from Germany to Kazakhstan, with spells in Yemen, Oman and Abu Dhabi, patiently sending his savings to his wife and brother to build a four-storey family home in the camp, adding floors whenever the money allowed.
Three months after he returned in 2007, a conflict in which he had no part reduced his life's work to ruins.
All 6,000 homes were destroyed in the shabby warren of alleys and two- to six-storey buildings crammed into a coastal pocket of two square km (less than a square mile).
The Lebanese government and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), which cares for Palestinian refugees, have promised Nahr al-Bared will rise again -- unlike three refugee camps that were destroyed during Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.
They say construction will now start on the first of eight areas to be rebuilt in a rolling programme planned, but far from fully funded, over the next two to three years. The end-goal is a "model camp" with vastly improved living conditions.
Some Palestinians find it hard to square this promise with the army's pounding of Nahr al-Bared, after civilians had fled, to crush a few hundred Fatah al-Islam gunmen entrenched there.
BITTER FEELING
"If you find a snake in your house, do you demolish your house?" asked Samih Hajjo, 60, a doctor at an UNRWA clinic. "If they're going to rebuild the camp, why was it destroyed?"
Hajjo's own house was shelled and burnt in the conflict, which engulfed but did not totally destroy the "new camp," a spillover area for refugees keen to escape the confines of the original camp set up after Israel's creation in 1948.
His doubts reflect the vulnerability felt by displaced residents forced to live in temporary shelter since mid-2007.
The army denies them access to the old camp, still riddled with unexploded munitions, and imposes strict exit and entry controls on all four roads into the new camp, hamstringing efforts to revive its once-vibrant trade with Lebanese environs.
The Lebanese military is determined to prevent any return of the al Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam group, or any repeat of the battles that killed more than 400 people, 170 of them soldiers.
Even if access is eventually eased, the security forces intend to keep a presence inside Nahr al-Bared, in contrast to other camps loosely controlled by armed Palestinian factions.
"This camp, once rebuilt, will be under the full authority of the Lebanese government. In other words, no more Palestinian arms or gangs," Khalil Makkawi, who heads a liaison group known as the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee, told Reuters.
"If we succeed ... it is going to be a showcase for other camps," the government official said.
For now, the army controls at Nahr al-Bared are fuelling discontent among a business-minded refugee population.
"We have a problem with the checkpoints," grumbled Nasser Taha, 43, who sells sweets and cigarettes from a kiosk among the prefabricated UNRWA units housing hundreds of homeless families.
Before the fighting, the father of eight made a decent living for his family selling fish to Palestinians and Lebanese.
"Now there is no chance for people to buy fish because they don't have electricity or fridges. I can't afford to buy fridges myself and the Lebanese can't come into the camp to trade."
Taha's family occupies two of the UNRWA units which house thousands of returnees from the congested Beddawi camp, where most Nahr al-Bared residents took refuge from the fighting.
GRIM CONDITIONS
He described the flimsy, crowded dwellings, hot in summer and cold and sometimes leaky in winter, as unfit for living.
"Our life has been miserable since the destruction of Nahr al-Bared," Taha added. "I hope the camp will be rebuilt as soon as possible so we can regain the life we had before."
UNRWA's project director for Nahr al-Bared reconstruction, Charles Higgins, said the start of physical rebuilding should help reassure sceptical refugees. "We do sincerely believe it's going to happen," he said. "We wouldn't be here otherwise."
So far UNRWA has raised $42 million (29.9 million pound) from foreign donors, with another $10 million pledged -- or about a quarter of the overall estimated reconstruction cost of more than $200 million.
Fund-raising efforts might benefit from the world attention that Israel's recent onslaught on Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip has focussed on the plight of Palestinian refugees across the region, said UNRWA director in Lebanon, Salvatore Lombardo.
He described conditions in Nahr al-Bared and other camps as "quite appalling" but welcomed what he saw as an acceptance by the Lebanese government of the need to improve them.
Lombardo encouraged the authorities to allow more access to Nahr al-Bared to revive its economy. "We don't want to see that population depending on humanitarian aid for ever," he said.
Lebanon, under Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, has taken small steps to improve life for Palestinians, but acknowledges that much remains to be done, amid lingering hostility to refugees.
"We strongly believe that as long as these Palestinians are living in misery and deprivation, it is fertile ground for the extremists, the fundamentalists, in these camps," Makkawi said.
"It's very obvious, so it is in our interests to improve the humanitarian conditions of these Palestinians."
(Editing by Matthew Jones)
