[News] Hezbollah and the Palestinians

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/lamb09232008.html

September 23, 2008


Can the Party of God Deliver Them From Exile?


Hezbollah and the Palestinians

By FRANKLIN LAMB

“The response to the massacre at Sabra-Shatila 
was for the resistance to become active in 
Lebanon. If the Lebanese people had given up on 
the resistance, they too would have been 
complicit in the massacres of Qana and Sabra and Shatila.”

– Hasan Nassallah June 4, 2002

“We renew our pledge to Jerusalem, to the 
Palestinians, and to the cause and Imam of 
Jerusalem; their city will forever remain in our 
souls, and will continue to be our cause, our 
battle, and our ultimate objective.”

– Hasan Nassallah October 28, 2005

The fundamental consequences of the 1982 Massacre 
at Sabra-Shatila and the founding of Hezbollah 
are two seismic events from the same time and 
place which some argue are locked in an embrace 
that will return Palestine to the Palestinians

In fewer than 45 minutes following the explosion 
in Islamabad at the 315-room Marriott Hotel 
during the Ramadan Iftar mealtime, Saturday, 
Hezbollah security units nearly invisibly secured 
the area of the 162-room Beirut Marriott 
Hotel.  One of the embassies they secured was 
that of Palestine, which opened last year.

The security precautions were less out of love 
for the Bush administration, which the movement 
considers a rogue terrorist regime, or love for 
the Zionist-owned hotel chain, than the fact that 
the Marriott is within one of Hezbollah’s densely 
populated base areas.  Dahiyeh, which includes 
several southern Beirut neighborhoods, often 
erroneously referred to as “suburbs”, is less 
than a mile from the Palestinian refugee area known as Sabra-Shatila.

Hezbollah works regularly to intercept elements 
openly boasting of or secretly planning on 
attacking its neighborhoods. Some being watched 
and infiltrated are Al Qaida inspired Sunni 
Salafist cells, who consider Shia Hezbollah more 
their enemy than they do the US or Israeli 
governments. Contrary to Robert Fisk’s recent 
reports, these groups are indeed growing in 
Lebanon and inside the Palestinian Camps, 
particularly Ain el Helwe, Bedawi.   They are 
trying to launch in the so far peaceful camps 
near Tyre. This observer would agree with Fisk 
that it will not be easy for Al Qaida to find 
enough supporters and adherents of the 
Salafi-Jihadi ideology to challenge the strength 
of Hezbollah’s well-organized partisans. Yet, no 
fewer than 11 Al Qaida-inspired groups, eager to 
destabilize Lebanon, and sometimes related to 
US-Israel projects, have been organizing 
according to Palestinian Popular Committee 
Representatives inside the Camps.  Some of their 
goals are being telegraphed by the rising 
campaign of threats coming from their 
sometime-sponsors in Tel Aviv and Washington.

The Angry Bear Returns to the Levant

When the rest of the story is able to be told 
concerning what really was happening during the 
late April and early May events in West Beirut, 
the facts will support a very different 
conclusion than the narrative offered by the 
Welch Club. Researchers expect to elucidate 
contents of ten and one half hours of taped 
conversations between Washington and its Lebanese 
surrogates. Conversations are referred to during 
a meeting between Hezbollah’s number two, Sheifk 
Naim Qassim, and a former US Ambassador with his 
American delegation during a July 2008 dialogue 
in Dahiyeh. A full report of the May events will 
also document details of what is known by many 
here, that every incoming and outgoing 
communication at the US Embassy is carefully 
monitored, analyzed and contemplated. The same 
with Israeli Sunday Cabinet meetings.

This week the Israeli Army’s Information Security 
Chief, Colonel Ram Dor, complained in the Israeli 
newspaper, Yediot Ahronot (Latest News) that 
Russia is relaying intelligence information to 
Hezbollah. Dor said Russian Navy spy ships and 
Russian personnel serving at monitoring stations 
on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights carry out 
intercept and hacking missions and relay Israeli secrets to Hezbollah.

“My evaluation is that such facilities can cover 
most of Israel’s territory,” Dor said.

The US intelligence unit in the American Embassy 
in Beirut also blames the hacking and sharing of 
its ‘most secured communications’ on the Russians 
while others claim its tit-for-tat for what the 
Mossad and CIA did early last year in Georgia.

US Embassy Internet security experts are unclear 
to what extent the Russian military is directly 
responsible for “communication compromises,” but 
they claim that the traffic patterns and servers 
used in the operation are definitely coming out 
of Russia and result from increased Russian activity in the Middle East.

Some in Beirut speculate that this explains why 
the meticulously planned US/Israeli “May 
Surprise” turned out to be a ”May Surprise” for 
its sponsors and their local teammates, who were 
dropped like a bad habit when the project imploded.

To counter this problem, the US Defense 
Intelligence Agency’s newly created Defense 
Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center 
is authorized for the first time to carry out 
“strategic offensive counterintelligence 
operations” in Lebanon and against any group 
anywhere which the Bush administration considers 
“terrorist,” according to Mike Pick of the DEA, who will direct the program.

Covert offensive operations will be carried out 
in Lebanon and abroad against people known or 
suspected to be connected to foreign intelligence 
or international terrorist activities, according 
to Toby Sullivan, Director of Counterintelligence 
for James R. Clapper, Jr., the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

According to Walter Pincus, who covers 
counterintelligence for the Washington Post, 
these sensitive, clandestine operations are 
“tightly controlled departmental activities run 
by a small group of specially selected people” 
within the Defense Department. The new unit is 
designed to thwart what groups like Hezbollah 
might be trying to do to us and to learn more 
about what they’re trying to get from us,” 
Sullivan said. In the case of “terrorists,” the 
object would be to identify people who might be 
“trying to do harm, collect information about us, 
and keep them from doing that. So far we don’t 
know if Hezbollah is trying to do anything to us 
but we will watch them,” he stated.

“You stop, we stop,” is the Putin offer to the 
next US administration, according to 
Congressional staff sources on the US Senate 
Intelligence Committee. Many in power in Moscow 
also consider the Bush administration a 
“terrorist cabal” and are awaiting the November 
election results, hoping Obama wins.

The Student Laptops and the KKK Kid

Hours before the Marriott was attacked in 
Pakistan, Fairouz Husseini sat with her 
girlfriends in the courtyard outside Haifa Middle 
School across the road from Shatila Refugee Camp, 
which is administered by UNWRA in Bir Hassan. 
Fairouz and her friends were giddy two days after 
receiving laptops at the 26th Anniversary of the 
Sabra-Shatila Massacre Memorial.

“I love it! I can’t believe it’s mine to keep!”, 
Fairouz exclaimed as she protectively dusted off 
the pale green cover of her new XO laptop, and 
recorded an interview with the screen sized video 
and built-in camera.  The XO laptop is part of an 
advanced teaching tool developed at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology that some 
believe can revolutionize education in developing countries.

“That American man told us that if we used it 
properly it would open the doors to the Great 
Library of Alexandria for us and we can learn as 
much as any student at the best schools anywhere in the World!” she added.

Amal, a very loquacious 13 year old friend of 
Fairouz chimed in, “We are making a laptop club 
at our school.  We call it: Learn for our Return! 
Is that a good name? What do you think? Our 
friend Ahmad says it’s a silly idea. Anyway, 
Ahmad does not behave properly and is sort of 
wild. He is what we call a KKK kid - Kalashnikov, 
Kassem and Katyusha.  Anyhow, most students in 
the camps are peaceful and we want to rebuild our 
country when we go back and we need lots of knowledge to do it!”

Fairouz and her Ramadan-fasting pals were already 
out of school for the day even though it was not 
yet noon. Lebanon’s camp Palestinians are 
severely challenged by a shortened school day due 
to overcrowding.  On average around there are 35, 
but sometimes there are as many as 50 students 
per class, and because UNWRA must run two shifts 
daily.  Student and teacher absenteeism is high, 
standards are low, text books insufficient, 
infrastructure poor, and dropout rates increasing.

Of the 59 Palestinian camps in the Levant (Syria, 
Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon) only the camp 
schools in Gaza are as bad, indeed worse, as those in Lebanon.

Gaza Director of the UN Relief and Works Agency 
(UNRWA) John Ging reports that up to 60 percent 
of Gazan children at UNRWA schools had failed 
their math exams last year, while 40 percent 
failed their Arabic exams at the beginning of the year.

UNRWA provides schooling for Palestinian refugee 
children from grade 1 through 9, but offers 
limited secondary education and, as in Lebanon, 
these schools are forced to operate double shifts 
due to overcrowding.  ”Many children come to 
school hungry and unable to concentrate,” according to Ging.

Haifa Fahmi al-Agha, the Palestinian National 
Authority (PNA) Education Ministry’s Director 
General in the Gaza Strip, has documented that 
failure rates at schools in Gaza were 
deliberately lowered the past few years to cope 
with overcrowded classrooms, too few schools and 
limited educational funds. The same “lowering of 
the bar” trend is creeping into Palestinian schools in Lebanon.

Shatila Camp, as well as its sister, Burj al 
Baraneh, is located in Ghouberi Municipality, 
whose Council is now controlled by Hezbollah, 
whose party members won all 21 Council seats in 
both the 1998 and 2004 elections. Hezbollah 
security protects the whole area around Shatila 
Camp, and Haifa and other Palestinian Schools 
with their Shia, Sunni and Christian students. 
The Sabra-Shatila area is an increasingly 
close-knit area bringing together the Sunni 
Palestinians and the Shia Hezbollah.

More than 90% of Lebanon’s Palestinian students 
interviewed recently, in an admittedly 
unscientific poll, appear to believe that 
Hezbollah holds out their best hope to return to 
Palestine, and insist their parents would vote 
for Hezbollah in next year’s critical election if 
Palestinians were allowed to vote in Lebanon.

Before leaving for home, Fairouz introduced this 
observer to her lovely mother, Nour.  Nour is a 
community organizer who had come to collect her 
daughter.  She elaborated on why the Sunni and 
partially secular Palestinian community of Bir 
Hasan (where the first killers assembled 26 years 
ago before being sent into the Camp) have come to 
support the Shia Party of God despite a sometimes troubled past relationship.

The Non-ID Issue and Palestinian Gratitude

Besides shared values regarding education, 
Hezbollah supports the project that is now 
finally happening to give Palestinians identification cards for the first time.

“This is so important to our people in Lebanon. 
Actually Hezbollah worked quietly with Prime 
Minister Siniora’s people to achieve this much 
needed progress,” the community organizer 
explained.  “They do a lot for us but they don’t 
announce it to the public so much.”

Many Palestinians credit pressure and dialogue 
from Hezbollah with the announcement last month 
that the government of Lebanon will finally issue 
temporary identification cards to perhaps as many 
as 5000 Palestinian families (around 20,000 
individuals) who have no documents and who 
habitually hide from the authorities or risk 
imprisonment. PM Fouad Siniora, in bed with the 
Bush Administration, wins kudos for his work on 
this issue. Siniora appears to reject the 
Bush/Cheney and Israeli intense antipathy toward 
Resistance supporting Palestinians.

The Lebanese authorities have thus agreed after 
40 years to give temporary ID cards to “non-ID” 
Palestinian refugees. Palestinians without any ID 
documents are subject to more capricious 
treatment by authorities than those holding UNWRA 
ID or Ration Cards or NR (”Non Registered”) cards.

Most non-ID Palestinians are either former 
“Fedayeen” or descendants of the Palestinian 
fighters who came to Lebanon in the 1970s after 
being driven from Jordan during the “Black 
September” conflict with the Jordanian monarchy.

To qualify for the new IDs these individuals need 
to get a residence notice from a Mukhtar and 
submit it to the Lebanese General Security. The 
Non-ID card will help settle the legal status of 
thousands of Palestinians living in Lebanon and 
is about the only good news for the Palestinians 
here since their PLO protectors left Beirut in 
1982, when the camp’s steep descent into misery 
accelerated. Lebanon’s new PLO “Embassy,” which 
was allowed to open in May of 2006, has already 
received 2,600 names of applicants.

Like all Palestinians, the new ID-holders will 
still not be allowed to work in professional 
vocations or to own property, but at least their 
marriages will be legally registered and, 
theoretically, they can no longer be rounded up by the authorities at whim.

Sidon Mukhtar Mohammad Baasiri explained that 
dozens of Palestinians were flocking into his 
office on a daily basis seeking IDs. “I have 
hundreds of applications from Palestinians who 
want to get a residence notice as a starting 
point toward getting an ID,” Mukhtar Bassiri noted.

Over the past two years, more than 350 non-ID 
refugees had been arrested in Sidon alone and 
more than 200 students were denied the right to 
access its schools and universities. To its 
everlasting credit, UNRWA often allows non-ID 
children to “sneak” into its schools - but they 
cannot pass their examinations at age 18 and gain 
qualifications because that requires legal 
papers. As reported by Daily Star’s  Fayez 
Najjar, an unregistered Palestinian father of 14 
children from Ein el Helwe Camp explained that 
his sons had been arrested for lack of ID several 
times as they stepped outside the autonomous 
security system of Palestinian-controlled camps. 
Hezbollah is credited with helping advance this project.

Fatima Khalife’s Quadruplets and Hasan Nasrallah

This is another example of Hezbollah “good 
neighborliness” mentioned by Hajjah Nour, which 
this observer had actually learned about earlier 
while conducting research in Mar Elias Camp in Beirut.

Many foreigners may not be familiar with the 
6000-resident Mar Elias Palestinian Refugee Camp 
located just to the Northwest of Sabra and 
Shatila. It is small, one of the original camps 
set up in 1948.  It is heavily made up by 
Christians from Nazarath and surrounded by 
Gulf-funded high rise construction 
projects.  Salivating investors eye its 
boundaries and prime location near the sandy 
beach of Ramlet al Baida and Hamra.

Last month, this observer, en route to an 
appointment inside the Camp, was negotiating the 
sharp turns of alleys so narrow and dark that 
they have likely never been warmed by direct 
sunlight, barely enough space to advance along on a motorcycle.

Suddenly I noticed a gaggle of squealing 
pre-teens lining up for motorcycle rides and 
practicing their English with “hello!”, ‘how are 
you?”, “welcome!” The kids apparently recognized 
me and the trusty steed “Silver” from an earlier 
visit.  But this time it was necessary to 
apologize and explain in very weak Arabic what 
“next time” meant because I was rushing to an 
appointment with a camp social worker, who told 
me yet another “Hezbollah story” which affords 
insight into the Party’s relationship with Palestinians in Lebanon:

On August 9, 2005, a Palestinian mother named 
Fatima Khalife gave birth to Quadruplets in 
Shatila Camp. One of the four babies, Omar, was 
very ill and not expected to live. He needed 
life-saving surgery and his family inquired at 
the nearby Safah Hospital. Being Palestinian, 
Lebanese law forbids any assistance from the 
National Social Security Fund, meager as it is. 
UNRWA contributed around $2000 and some local 
NGOs another $1,500. Still about $37,000 shy, the 
family was very happy when an article about the 
boy’s plight was published in the local daily, As 
Safir.  Two wealthy humanitarian Lebanese women 
came forward and offered to help the infant by paying for his surgery.

The Palestinian community was ecstatic and prayed 
for success with the delicate operation. Shortly 
before the scheduled surgery, a call was received 
at the hospital business office that caused its 
cancellation.  When it was learned that Omar is a 
Palestinian, the well-to-do Lebanese ladies, 
perhaps with memories of the civil war and lost 
loved ones, withdrew their offer of medical assistance.

Word of what happened circulated in the 
crestfallen community. A local TV station, New 
TV, ran a story about the Khalife family’s 
desperate plight as Omar’s brain infection took a 
virulent turn. Within minutes of the program 
being aired, the office of Hezbollah’s Secretary 
General Hassan Nasrallah called Omar’s father. 
Hezbollah said it would like to pay for the boy’s 
surgery and all subsequent expenses until the boy 
was well. And it did. Nasrallah had watched the 
program and was deeply moved. Today, Omar is 
healthy, sweet, rambunctious, beautiful, three 
years old who just learned how to press the 
ignition button and start a foreigner’s motorcycle.

Hezbollah cannot solve all the Palestinian’s 
problems in Lebanon pending their return to 
Palestine, but with no one to rely on but 
themselves, Palestinians appreciate enormously such gestures as saving Omar.

At the risk of over-simplification, one concludes 
that these kinds of “Robin Hood” stories have 
created a broad admiration for the Hezbollah-led 
Resistance in Lebanon’s Palestinian community - 
as do Hezbollah’s straight-dealing with the 
Shatila and Burj al Burajneh Camps in the Ghoberi 
Municipality, where it helps with 
infrastructural, sewer and water projects 
(probably against “the law” and wishes of many in Lebanon).

This is not to say that there are no lingering 
personal grudges within Lebanon’s 
Shia/Palestinian community from individuals who 
suffered at the hands of the other over the past 
four decades during the civil war and Zionist 
occupation. Yet, one Palestinian friend, Samer, a 
Mar Elias Camp social worker, reported that both 
communities want to let bygones be bygones. He 
points out that marriages between Shia and Sunni 
and Christian Palestinians are increasing (his 
wife is Shia). He also pointed out and that he 
personally has more Hezbollah friends than 
Palestinian, as he introduced me to his best 
friend, Ali, a Shia and Hezbollah party member.

Franklin Lamb can be reached at 
<mailto:fplamb at gmail.com>fplamb at gmail.com. The 
SabraShatila website is 
<http://www.sabrashatila.org>www.sabrashatila.org. 
He is finishing a book on Hezbollah.




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