The second programme exploring the lives of Palestinian refugees, this Life episode is set in Lebanon, where - according to the UN - there are 375,000 Palestinian refugees. Palestinians are unwanted in Israel, as we saw last week's programme; but in war-torn, sectarian Lebanon, among fellow Arabs, they hardly fare better, and most live in poverty. Barred from working, they also have limited access to medical care and higher education. Many have been in Lebanon for 50 years.

Dr Iklas Mustapha, a Palestinian doctor working in the PLO-funded Haifa hospital in Burj el Barajneh refugee camp, Beirut, earns US$200 a month, and is glad of the work: she's forbidden work in any Lebanese hospital. She started work in 1985, at the beginning of the 'camps war': "During that period there were a lot of casualties, there were a lot of injuries and I learned to deal with all sorts of problems and all sorts of injuries." Many of them women she sees, like Mahida Mounir al Habet, who is five months pregnant, are anaemic because they are too poor to buy nutritious food.

Beirut camp

There are 17,000 Palestinians in overcrowded Burj el Barajneh. Mahida lives here with her mother in law, sister in law, and their family, in all eight people in two rooms. "At any moment the Palestinians can be thrown out of Lebanon. They don't have anything - they don't have homes, they don't have land, they don't have anything. So they could just pick them up and throw them out at any moment. There's only one working, my oldest son and he works on and off. My husband works for a day or maybe ten and then sits at home for a month... I wish I could leave before I give birth because I want my children's rights, my rights and my husband's rights to be secured."

Sultan Abu Alaynen, the chief PLO official in Lebanon, confirms that life is very difficult for the refugees. "The Lebanese government are implementing laws and rules banning them from having the right to work in 74 trades and professions. All international organisations who have conducted detailed research into the socio-economic situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have verified that over 65% of Palestinians live below the poverty line."

Girls in car

Former Lebanese government minister Issam Naaman agrees that the Palestinians are badly treated. "The Lebanese think that if the Palestinians are equally treated as the Lebanese then this may induce them to settle here against the will of the Lebanese Government; against the will of the PLO; and against the resolutions of the Arab League."

But the Arab League Casablanca Protocol of 1965 states that Palestinian refugees should be treated in the same way as citizens of the host country but without being given citizenship. Lebanon is in breach of this resolution.

Hard up as they are, Palestinians living in refugee camps around Beirut are better off than those in the camps in South Lebanon like Burj el-Shemali near the Israel border. These camps are much more strictly controlled: refugees are not allowed to build or even repair their houses. UNRWA try to persuade the government to allow repairs, but without result.

Captain Lemon

The only work available here for Palestinians is seasonal fruit picking, and at dawn the lucky ones go off to the orange groves. Most of the pickers are well qualified, with vocational training, but this is all they are allowed to do. One is a ship's captain: "Even if a person has a degree in medicine he's only allowed to work legally in Lebanon with a pick and picking lemons. 10,500 lira (US$ 6.30)- so, basically that's just enough to get bread for the home... Jesus was born in our country and if you love Jesus then you would at least respect us for that. God will help us," says Captain Lemon.

After the massacres at Shatila and Sabra in 1982 and the camps war that followed in 1985, when the Amal militia laid siege to the refugee camps, a former PLO Hospital in Shatila became a refuge for displaced people. Families have lived here; children have been born here, grown up here - trapped here by poverty. Hamad is handicapped and has been trapped for four years, unable to leave his room. UNRWA can't help him, pleading lack of funds. Dr Naaman says: "The Palestinians do think - and the Lebanese as well - that UNWRA is decreasing its budget, especially on the educational and health levels, in order to pressure the Palestinians to accept settlement in the Arab countries where they are living now."

But as Mariam Hamouda of the Palestinian Women's Union explains: "Our problem is not just what we suffer in Lebanon, our problem is that we have been kicked out of our country and we need to know how to go back." An old lady in Shatila puts it more graphically: "We want our villages, our entire country. We want to be able to go back and grow crops and eat from our land. And our water? It was plentiful and it was beautiful - it used to glisten, just like gold."

TRANSCRIPT Read the full transcript of Waiting to Go

Watch a QuickTime clip from Waiting to Go.

You will need the free QuickTime plug-in.