Ain el Helweh camp, Lebanon
It isn’t just the Zionist regime still occupying Palestine six decades after the Nakba; one can sense the carnivorous
drooling from Tel Aviv to Amman, from Riyadh and the Gulf Kingdoms all the way to Washington DC and beyond—drooling and
salivation over the current tensions between the Palestinian Resistance and what is in some respects its historic
offspring—Hezbollah.
The hostile forces gathered against the Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah-Palestine Resistance alliance are hard at work on yet
another project to weaken, and possibly destroy, all four. It won’t be easy, but it is reportedly a key game plan among
those still seeking regime change in Syria.
Even as some of these governments deceptively play down their central goal of regime change in public, they appear to be
fantasizing that by building up the Lebanese army—with a pledged $3 billion from Riyadh—that Lebanese troops can be
induced to confront Hezbollah and its allies, this in what seems to be a “beat em or bleed em” strategy.
Patrick Cockburn, writing recently in the UK Independent and Counterpunch, gave a digest of anti-Shia hate propaganda
being spread by Sunni religious figures, clerics financially backed by, and in some cases based in, Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf monarchies. Cockburn noted accurately that what is being painstaking laid is the groundwork for a sectarian civil
war engulfing the entire Muslim world.
Efforts to egg on a confrontation between Palestinians and Hezbollah have increased over the past three months in
Lebanon’s camps, stemming principally from some of the local Sunni and Christian power centers. Support is being seen
for various “militia of the month” groups, those terrorizing the population of the Syrian Arab Republic, while the
remaining Palestinians in Yarmouk camp in Damascus, now numbering about 17,000 out of what was a population of 250,000
in March of 2011, continue to be essentially imprisoned without food and medical care.
This is not to say that tensions have never existed between a small percentage of the Palestinians in Lebanon and a few
disparate factions within Hezbollah and its allies—the Amal Movement and Michele Aoun’s, Free Patriotic Movement (FPM).
Aoun is among the most anti-Palestinian of the Christian warlords, and in the view of some he is the principle reason
Hezbollah has not pushed for Palestinians to be afforded the right to work and own a home in Lebanon. As for Amal, this
Shia ally of Hezbollah is widely believed to have killed more Palestinians in Lebanon during the 1985-88 camp massacres
(it would be a misnomer to call them “wars” as the camps were basically defenseless) than Zionists have in the past 60
years. To this day, many Palestinians take deep umbrage at Amal posters placed outside Shatila and other camps, since
the longtime Amal leader pictured on them is despised by Palestinians in Lebanon almost universally as having given the
orders to slaughter so many of them. Yet attempts to remove the posters risk a backlash from the Amal armed militia that
occupies part of Shatila. The Sunni and Shia populations in the camps largely co-exist in a tense but generally peaceful
juxtaposition with refugees from Syria, but it’s not the quality of relations that obtained before the Syria crisis
began and before Hezbollah’s involvement in that crisis.
Total Palestinian support for the “National Lebanon Resistance” led by Hezbollah is also viewed as questionable by some.
Evidence has emerged of individual Palestinians supporting anti-Hezbollah militia forces and political parties in
Lebanon, and camp officials have admitted that a small number of Palestinians go and return to Syria to fight against
the Assad regime. And then there are some who are close to Hezbollah who claim that many Palestinians don’t appreciate
the fact that the organization is the main supporter of their cause to return to Palestine, saying Palestinians are
ingrates for all that Hezbollah does for them. The rebuttals to this include that regrettably Hezbollah has done little
for Palestinians living in Lebanon’s camps, and that it has not used its political power to force Lebanon to comply with
international law and grant elementary civil rights to Palestinians, including the rights to work and to own a home.
Against this backdrop, Al-Nusra Front leader Abou Mohammed al-Jawlani insists his organization is active on Lebanese
soil in order to help the Sunnis, including Palestinians, face the “injustice” of Shiite Hezbollah. “Lebanon’s Sunni are
requesting that the mujahideen intervene to lift up the injustice they are suffering from at the hands of Hezbollah and
similar militias,” he said recently in an interview on Al-Jazeera.
Shiite-populated areas across Lebanon have been the target of terror attacks since Hezbollah entered the fighting on the
side of the Syrian regime in May. Three car bombings have targeted southern Beirut in recent months, while a number of
IED attacks have occurred in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley.
The head of the Islamic Jihadist Movement in Ain al-Hilweh camp voiced fears on January 8 of a possible armed sectarian
confrontation between Hezbollah and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon if the party did not revise its policies at home and
in Syria. Sheikh Jamal Khattab told the Daily Star that should fighting erupt between Palestinians and Hezbollah the
conflict could be even worse than the “war of the camps” (read: massacres) of the 1980s. That conflict was not
considered particularly sectarian in that it had been a case of the Amal Shia forces attacking the largely Sunni
Palestinians, but with Hezbollah intervening to help end it and thus protecting the Palestinian civilian population.
Today, says Sheikh Khattab, it would be different. Today it would be a Sunni vs. Shia war, with regional and
international consequences, given the poisonous sea-change in sectarian relations since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In Ain al-Hilweh and other camps, posters of local men killed while fighting alongside Syrian rebels, or against U.S.
troops in Iraq, are tacked up throughout the camp. Lebanese security sources claim that Palestinian Islamist groups in
Ain al-Hilweh have all finalized preparations to defend Sidon against any attack by Hezbollah’s organized and trained
“Resistance Brigades.” These organizations include Usbat al-Ansar, Jund al-Sham, Fatah al-Islam, and other Salafist
groups, and supporters of the controversial fugitive Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, and rumors abound that some of these
elements are being financed by certain of the six Gulf Cooperation Council states as well as some Lebanese pro-Western
March 14 parties. Apparently the consideration among such groups and their sponsors is that conditions in Lebanon are
ripe for an expanded war against “Shia infidels,” and reportedly plans are now in place to bring it here, with several
groups that are now fighting in Syria pledging to widen the Sunni-Shia war into Lebanon.
The Palestinian Follow-Up Committee, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Fatah and the Palestinian National
Security Forces have all strongly condemned accusations against Ain al-Hilweh camp in the wake of the assassination of
ex-Finance Minister Mohammed Shatah, calling such accusations haphazard and irresponsible. People are reminded as well
of the tight grip the army continues to maintain over Nahr al Bared, near Tripoli in the north of Lebanon. Based on
interviews by this observer with residents of Ain el-Helweh, there clearly can be found there supporters of the Islamic
State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), the Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda, and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades among others. But one
finds this across Lebanon, especially in Sunni areas. Officials claim that while they cannot prevent anyone from joining
the fighting in Syria, all Palestinian groups in Lebanon and Syria and elsewhere have consistently maintained a policy
of non-involvement in the Syrian crisis. Even so, criticism of Hezbollah’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad
remains.
For their part, some pro-Hezbollah groups and many Lebanese citizens are suspicious of possible Palestinian involvement
in recent terror attacks in Dahiyeh and the recent bombing of the Iranian Embassy. In point of fact, one of the two
suicide bombers who attacked the Iranian Embassy on November 17 was Mouin Abu Dahr, a known pro-Palestinian whose mother
is a Shiite and his father a Sunni. Ain al-Hilweh of course has also been in the spotlight with the arrest of Majid
al-Majid, the leader of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Majid is believed to have lived in the camp
since 2012.
Clearly Israel and its new—as well as its longtime—allies seek a Sunni-Shia war, and the sooner the better. Also favored
is a continuation of the Syria crisis for the reason that they consider Hezbollah to be squandering some of its best
fighters and commanders and well as its weapons stores. Western Diplomats have spoken about US-Israeli hopes that Syria
will be Hezbollah’s Achilles heel and Iran’s Vietnam, and Israeli media have commented on views by some officials that
Hezbollah has shifted its attention toward Syria and away from the southern front with occupied Palestine.
Time will tell.
Hezbollah maintains it is using only five percent of its capacity to confront Israel, and according to one source close
to the Resistance:
Hezbollah has self-sufficiency when it comes to the missiles, strategic and non-strategic weapons. All these weapons are
quite abundant. Any additional equipment will constitute a negative factor because there is no need for them. All the
weapons that are manufactured by Iran or owned by Syria are also available for Hezbollah. The land forces and the
Special Forces fighting in Syria have acquired a lot of practical and intelligence related experience and a force of
maneuvering on the land. This experience will be used when the war with Israel begins again.
The Sunni and the Shia, just as with the Palestinians and Hezbollah, need each other for many reasons, including
confronting growing Islamophobia, anti-Arab hate propaganda, and the deepening and broadening apartheid occupation of
Palestine.
All must work to tamp down their differences publicly and privately while endeavoring to neutralize sectarian
provocateurs, Sunni as well as Shia—domestic and regional as well as international—provocateurs that today are seeking
internecine and sectarian violence in order to weaken both sects, and even all of Islam.
ENDS