The lucky ones move in with relatives. The poorest sleep under bridges. Others find themselves crammed into the old Palestinian refugee camps of south Beirut. In a region where one upheaval succeeds another, the casualties of an earlier “catastrophe” in the eyes of Arabs – the birth of Israel 65 years ago – are now living alongside the fugitives of today’s calamity in Syria.

This remorseless flow of refugees into neighbouring countries means that talk of a “Syrian” civil war no longer makes sense. Not every MP who chose to speak in last week’s debate in Parliament seemed to have noticed, but this conflagration has spread beyond the boundaries of President Bashar al-Assad’s blood-soaked domain to become a crisis for the entire Middle East.

The numbers are staggering. At least 8,000 refugees enter Lebanon on a typical day, causing the country’s population of four million to grow by a quarter in the space of two years. Lebanon now hosts more Syrian refugees than anywhere else: almost 720,000 are officially registered, but there are probably another 300,000.  [Link]