Beirut, Lebanon – For decades, Palestinian groups in Lebanon have managed their affairs themselves. In the refugee camps created for the Palestinians moved by Israel in 1948 and 1967, the Palestinian factions supervised security and many have kept their weapons.
These days, however, seem to end. Instead, the Lebanese state is trying to take advantage of a period of weakness for the group supported by Iran, Hezbollah, while it fights to regain his war with Israel, to exercise its power over the country.
The new government of Lebanon – trained in February and managed by the former judge of the International Court of Justice Nawaf Salam – has the support of regional and international powers to disarm all non -state actors. This includes the many Palestinian groups that have borne arms since an agreement in 1969 which allowed them to have autonomy in the 12 official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
And Wednesday, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, gave his blessing during a visit to Lebanon. A joint declaration by Abbas and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said that the two parties had agreed that the existence “of weapons beyond the control of the Lebanese state was completed”.
“Abu Mazen (Abbas) came to say that we are guests in Lebanon and not above the Lebanese authority,” Mustafa Abu Harb, Fatah, the largest political faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (Plo) told Tel Aviv Tribune Harb. “We do not accept weapons in the hands of anyone other than the Lebanese state.”
Is Hamas on board?
Abbas, during his first trip to Lebanon since 2017, also met Prime Minister Salam and the President of Parliament Nabih Berri to discuss the difficult prospect of disarming Palestinian factions in Lebanon and improving the rights and conditions of the 270,000 Esimated Palestinians in the country.
Palestinians in Lebanon do not have the legal right to work in a number of professions, they may not have goods or businesses and cannot access the employment of the public service or the use of public services, such as health care and social security, according to UNRWA, the United Nations body created in 1948 for Palestinian refugees.
“We reaffirm our previous position according to which the presence of weapons in the camps outside the state framework is weakening Lebanon and also overnight to the Palestinian cause,” said Abbas at the meeting with Aoun, according to the Palestinian state news agency Wafa.
However, questions remain whether the abbas of division, which has not been raised since 2005, has the power to disarm the different Palestinian groups.
A senior Hamas official in Lebanon, Ali Barakeh, told the AFP news agency that he hoped that talks between Abbas and Aoun would go further than the disarmament of the Palestinian groups.
“We affirm our respect for the sovereignty, security and stability of Lebanon, and at the same time, we demand the supply of civil and human rights for our Palestinian people in Lebanon,” said Barakeh.
Hamas, which – with Hezbollah – is part of the broader Iranian “resistance axis” network, has already cooperated with the Lebanese state at least one opportunity from the ceasefire with Israel. In May, the Palestinian group delivered a fighter suspected of having pulled rockets over Israel, according to the Lebanese army, and called them “individual acts”.
The group also said that it respects the ceasefire and was willing to work with the Lebanese state.
‘Not our president’
During his reign of two decades, the popularity of Abbas among the Palestinians in Lebanon was strongly eroded.
This lack of support can be seen in the Palestinian camps of Lebanon, where the posters of the predecessor of Abbas, Yasser Arafat, as well as the spokesperson for Hamas, Abu Obeida, can be seen much more than those of the chief of the AP.
“None of the Palestinians, except for Fatah, claims that he is our president,” said Shatila, a community leader of the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. “This president does not honor us and does not represent us because he supports the occupation and adopts the decisions of the occupation.”
Aside from the unpopularity of Abbas, other factors can lead to a decline against any attempted disarmament of Palestinian groups in Lebanon.
Nicholas Blanford, member of the non -resident senior of the Atlantic American reflection groups, said that he “could be interpreted as a victory for the Israelis if the Palestinians … were forced to give (their weapons)”.
Blanford also pointed out that defenders of the continuous presence of armed Palestinian groups in Lebanon indicate events such as the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, while between 2,000 and 3,500 Lebanese Palestinian and civil refugees were killed over two days by right -wing Christian nationalist forces with Israeli support in 1982.
Blanford, however, believes that consensus is directed towards the disarmament of at least the heavy weapons of the Palestinian factions in Lebanon, and that some Palestinians host this decision.
“As a Palestinian people, we certainly welcome them (the initiative) because things have changed,” said Majzoub.
Majzoub said that the bad actors took advantage of the lack of authority in the Lebanese state on the Palestinian camps to avoid being held responsible for crimes.
The Armed Forces of Lebanon rarely enter the Palestinian refugee camps.
In 2007, the army besieged the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon and clashed with the group of Fatah al-Islam, which was based in the camp. Hundreds died in the battle, which left large stretches of the uninhabitable camp.
On the occasion, the Lebanese army also infiltrated camps to arrest individuals.
The security situation can sometimes be tense in the camps, as is the case in other parts of Lebanon.
On Monday, local media reported that armed clashes between Rivaux drug traffickers in Shatila camp in Beirut forced residents to flee.
Among the worst incidents in recent years, there have been the large-scale battles that broke out in the summer of 2023 between armed groups in the Ein El-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon, after an attempted assassination stamped on a Fatah official. More than two dozen people were killed in the fighting before the negotiation of a ceasefire.
The transport of weapons in the camps was once considered as a right of resistance. But after more than seven decades of displacement and insecurity, some Palestinians from Lebanon today believe that weapons are underwenting their struggle for liberation.
“Palestinian weapons have become a threat to the Palestinian Revolution,” said Majzoub. “Now it is better to live under the protection of the Lebanese state.”
