NAHR AL-BARED CAMP, Lebanon — A few streets away from Mohammad al-Hajj Hussein’s home, a piece of graffiti scrawls across a wall. It reads, “Typical neighborhood.”

Compared to residential neighborhoods in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world, the statement rings true. There are broad concrete streets punctuated by corner shops and modern, pastel-colored apartment blocks of multi-bedroom homes and breezy courtyards. Nahr al-Bared, however, is not a typical neighborhood but a Palestinian refugee camp, places usually known in Lebanon for their overcrowded, ramshackle squalor. It is also untypical because it preserves social structures that can be traced back to villages uprooted in Palestine in 1948.

The place that Hajj Hussein’s family now calls home and is resettling into was destroyed by the Lebanese army 10 years ago. In 2007, the Lebanese army fought a ferocious battle in Nahr al-Bared against the jihadist group Fatah al-Islam, expunging the militants from the camp and displacing 27,000 Palestinians in the process. The conflict turned 95% of the camp into a wasteland.

Instead of throwing up new homes as quickly as possible, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) decided to rebuild Nahr al-Bared while adhering as closely as possible to the original layout.