Refugee
Resentment Simmers
As Fighting Escalates
By Jackson Allers
06 June, 2007
Inter Press Service
BADDAWI CAMP, Lebanon,
Jun 4 (IPS) - Fighting escalated Sunday and Monday in Lebanon
as the Sunni Islamic group Jund al-Asham attacked army positions outside
Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, Ain al-Hilweh, in the south.
Meanwhile, the top Palestinian
leadership in Lebanon says it cannot guarantee it can control the reaction
of the more than 400,000 Palestinians living in the 12 official refugee
camps throughout the country if the Lebanese army's all-out assault
on the besieged Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in the north causes a heavy
civilian death toll.
At the Fatah headquarters
in the nearby Baddawi Palestinian refugee camp, Hajj Rif'at, media director
for the mainstream Fatah organisation and a spokesperson for the multi-party
Palestinian Liberation Organisation, told IPS, "If the army invades
[Nahr al-Bared], I think that there will be many more Palestinian victims
from within the camp, and we refuse that the solution be at the expense
of our children and women and the destruction of our camp."
What began in May as a security
incident with bank robbers in the northern Lebanon coastal city of Tripoli
has turned into a prolonged military confrontation with a Sunni Islamist
group, Fatah al-Islam, that had taken root in Nahr al-Bared in the months
directly after the 34-day war with Israel that began Jul. 12, 2006.
For two weeks, the Lebanese
army has traded heavy gunfire with members of the group. Sources on
the ground say that the army has also sent thousands of 155-millimetre
tank shells and mortar rounds, into the refugee camp, to suppress any
movement from the fighters of Fatah al-Islam.
The fighting intensified
over the weekend as the Lebanese military sent in a newly acquired helicopter
gunship to blast the upper floors of buildings used by Fatah al-Islam
snipers. Observers say that the Lebanese army also captured strategic
parts of Fatah al-Islam's defensive positions that had been established
on the outer rims of the Nahr al-Bared camp.
The Lebanese army claims
to have killed dozens of Fatah al-Islam fighters over the last three
days. Sources confirm that at least 12 Lebanese soldiers were killed
and 10 wounded in the fighting over the weekend. Thus far, 40 army soldiers
have been killed since fighting began on May 20.
The pro-Western government
has vowed to defeat the militants at all cost, and analysts say that
any room for negotiating with the Sunni Islamist group was lost after
the first week of fighting. Indeed, Fatah al-Islam's leadership has
reiterated their willingness to fight to the last man, refusing to surrender
or give up their arms at this stage.
"We cannot afford to
bargain. We cannot compromise on the issue of terrorism," Lebanese
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said late this week.
These tactics have caused
a humanitarian crisis for the approximately 10,000 Palestinians still
trapped in the Nahr al-Bared camp.
Information coming from the
camp is limited. Residents who have been able to make phone calls from
within the camp say that the Lebanese army has continued to pound the
camp's interior with artillery fire where most of the civilians are
now located. This despite Lebanese government statements that all efforts
would be made to spare civilians in their effort to crush Fatah al-Islam.
The Palestinian Red Crescent
said at least 25 civilians have been killed in Nahr al-Bared since the
Lebanese army surrounded the camp two weeks ago.
According to Mahmoud Rashid,
an official at the Saffad Hospital in the Baddawi Camp, most if not
all of the civilian deaths that have been recorded have come from the
army shelling, and the number of dead is likely to rise significantly
because there is no medicine in the camp to treat the wounded.
The International Committee
for the Red Cross delivered 23 tonnes of food and nearly 60,000 litres
of water on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, providing the first significant
aid relief to the remaining Palestinians in the Nahr al-Bared camp who
have been without electricity, food or water since the fighting began.
Abbas Zaki, the top PLO representative
in Lebanon, said in a television interview on Wednesday, "There
are corpses rotting in the streets."
More than half of the estimated
35,000 residents of Nahr al-Bared have fled the fighting to the 11 other
official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
At the Baddawi Palestinian
refugee camp five kilometres from the northern coast city of Tripoli,
more than 20,000 civilians have sought refuge in the last 13 days, doubling
the camp's size and overburdening its social services.
As the fighting continues
around Nahr al-Bared, the anger on Baddawi's streets is palpable.
Khaled Yamani, an official
with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Lebanon said,
"Putting aside the issue of Fatah al-Islam and other similar groups,
the anger is brewing amongst the Palestinians because it is their people
who are being killed, and it's not being taken into consideration, and
this anger may even manifest itself outside the bounds of official Palestinian
structures."
Palestinians took to the
streets over the weekend to protest the Lebanese army's attacks on civilians
trapped in Nahr al-Bared. Residents of the Bourj al-Barajneh camp in
Beirut joined displaced families from Nahr al-Bared for a protest in
front of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency's medical centre
there on Friday, and hundreds of Palestinians gathered near a Lebanese
army outpost in the Rashidiyeh refugee camp in south Lebanon demanding
an immediate cease-fire and end to "random" attacks on civilians.
"When will we be allowed
to return to our homes? Is this a permanent resettlement?" Abu
Ali, a father of seven, asked Thursday from an Internet cafe in the
Baddawi camp. He and his entire family fled Nahr al-Bared to Baddawi
on the third day of fighting.
In the course of several
interviews, displaced families in the Baddawi camp were equating their
flight from Nahr al-Bared to what Palestinians call Nakba, or the "cataclysm",
referring to the flight of some 700,000 Palestinians that coincided
with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Although Prime Minister Siniora
has pledged to rebuild what has been destroyed by the Lebanese army
over the last two weeks in the battle against Fatah al-Islam, few of
the displaced in the Baddawi camp have put much stock in his statements.
Siniora's pro-Western government
has been locked in a protracted political battle with Hezbollah, a Shi'a
organisation, and its allies since last year's war with Israel. Reconstruction
efforts needed after Israel's military destruction of villages in south
Lebanon have yet to begin, and are not expected to until the ongoing
political crisis with Hezbollah reaches some sort of resolution.
This past weekend, Hezbollah
leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah condemned Siniora's government for bringing
in military aid from the United States and their Arab allies. On Sunday,
he said such assistance could provoke al-Qaeda style movements to begin
fighting in Lebanon as they have done in Iraq.
On Sunday and Monday, the
conflict heated up in southern Lebanon when another Sunni Islamic group,
Jund al-Sham, attacked Lebanese army positions outside Ain al-Hilweh
camp. Three Lebanese soldiers were killed, and although Palestinian
groups in the camp have moved to contain this small Islamist movement
from inflaming the situation, Lebanese army sources say the fighting
continues.
Meanwhile, Palestinians in
the camps in Lebanon are gathered around their television sets, or keeping
close watch on news through their mobile phones and at Internet cafes,
waiting to see what the body count will be for those civilians trapped
inside the Nahr al-Bared camp.
That information might be
slow in coming, as the Lebanese government has prevented journalists
and humanitarian organisations from entering areas in and around the
camp.
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