[News] Violence in Ein al-Hilweh a prism of regional power struggles

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/violence-ein-al-hilweh-prism-regional-power-struggles>
Violence in Ein al-Hilweh a prism of regional power struggles

Maureen Clare Murphy
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> - 16 September
2023
------------------------------
[image: Sunlight streams over the shoulders of young men carrying a coffin]

Palestinians carry the body of a Fatah fighter who was killed during
clashes with Islamist fighters in Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp in Sidon,
Lebanon, 14 September.
EFE

A tentative calm is holding in Ein al-Hilweh after a ceasefire was declared
Thursday night, ending the latest episode of violence disrupting life in
the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and the nearby city of
Sidon.

Intense battles between fighters with the Palestinian faction Fatah and
Islamist militias based in the camp have repeatedly broken out since late
July.

The last days of that month
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/31/whats-behind-the-fighting-in-ein-el-hilweh-palestinian-refugee-camp>
witnessed the attempted killing of Mahmoud Khalil, an Islamist fighter (one
of his companions was killed instead), and the apparent reprisal
assassination of Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi, a Fatah military commander, and
four of his bodyguards.

Thirteen people were killed in the days that followed.

Fatah has demanded the surrender of fighters suspected of involvement in
al-Armoushi’s 30 July assassination.

Seven fighters were reported killed in Ein al-Hilweh on 13 September alone.

On 10 September
<https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/unrwa_sit-rep_eeh_11.9.23.pdf>,
artillery fire from inside the camp reportedly struck two Lebanese army
bases, injuring five soldiers, one seriously.

According to UNRWA
<https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/unrwa_sit-rep_eeh_14.9.23.pdf>,
the UN agency for Palestine refugees, at least 18 people have been
reportedly killed and some 140 people injured in Ein al-Hilweh since 7
September.

Some 60,000 people live in Ein al-Hilweh, among them at least 35,000
Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA.

The camp is surrounded
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/hope-hard-come-lebanon-camp/19076>
by a concrete wall complete with watchtowers and checkpoints through which
the Lebanese army controls movement in and out of the camp. But under
an annulled
but still observed 1969 Cairo Accord
<https://www.newarab.com/analysis/behind-fighting-lebanons-ain-al-hilweh-refugee-camp>,
the army does not operate inside Ein al-Hilweh.

As *The New Arab* explains, “while the camp remains under Lebanon’s
sovereignty, its practical governance lies with Palestinians.”

“This means that security and administration within the camp fall under the
jurisdiction of popular committees and Palestinian factions and it serves
as a hub for numerous rival armed groups.”

Being the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, control of Ein
al-Hilweh is seen as a major prize.

The publication adds that “while Fatah, the main faction of the [Palestine
Liberation Organization], has traditionally held influence over Palestinian
camps in Lebanon, its leadership has faced challenges in recent years.”

“In this context, maintaining control over Ein al-Hilweh is vital to
reaffirming their leadership.”

And while factions vie for control over the camp, its population remains
destitute and disenfranchised.

For decades, Lebanon has prevented Palestinian refugees – people who were
expelled from their homeland by Zionist militias around the time of
Israel’s founding in 1948 and their descendants – from integrating
economically and socially.

Lebanon is meanwhile reeling from its own devastating economic crisis. Amid
that crisis and an influx of Syrian refugees from the war in that country,
Palestinians who have been in Lebanon for decades are perhaps its most
marginalized population.

Israel also bears much responsibility for the worsening plight of
Palestinians in Lebanon.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon remain as such because Israel refuses to
allow them to exercise their right of return to their homeland, as
enshrined in international law, because they are not Jews.

With few other means of survival, some young people take up arms in
exchange for a stipend from one of the camp’s political factions, Fatah
being the most prominent among them. Ghettoized Ein al-Hilweh has a
reputation for lawlessness and brief episodes of factional fighting are
nothing new.
Regional dynamics

However, regional dynamics are fueling the current instability in Ein
al-Hilweh, and so there is more at stake than a factional turf war this
time around.

A prevailing analysis holds that Hizballah and Hamas view the recent
fighting between Fatah and Islamist forces as an opportunity to weaken Fatah
<https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/90325>.

The Lebanese Shia resistance group Hizballah, supported by Iran, has
tremendous influence over what happens in southern Lebanon, where Sidon is
located.

The anti-Shia Islamist groups fighting Fatah in Ein al-Hilweh have
previously engaged in battle with Hizballah in Syria. Despite this inherent
enmity, Hizballah may find temporary utility in the Islamist groups, with
which its close ally Hamas has good relations, as a battering ram against
Fatah.

A weakened Fatah, this analysis holds, would help push back against the
normalization agenda and allow for the strengthening of the resistance axis
in Lebanon’s camps ahead of any regional confrontation with Israel.

A geographic and political rift separates Fatah, whose leader Mahmoud Abbas
presides over the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas, which
is seeking to spread armed resistance from Gaza to the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority meanwhile serves as a policing arm
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-are-us-and-israel-sending-more-guns-holocaust-denier-abbas>
for the Israeli occupation by arresting armed resistance operatives in the
West Bank.

A Palestinian woman wounded in clashes between Fatah and Islamist fighters
in Ein al-Hilweh rests at an UNRWA classroom in Sidon, southern Lebanon, on
11 September.
Wael Hamzeh EFE

Majed Faraj, the Palestinian Authority intelligence chief, visited Lebanon
and met with high-ranking government officials shortly before the
assassination of Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi and the ensuing clashes. The
proximity of his visit to the current unrest in Ein al-Hilweh has propelled
speculation
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/behind-the-fighting-in-ein-al-helweh-refugee-camp/>
that Ramallah played a role in its instigation.

All the while, an increasing number of Arab states are normalizing
relations with Israel, further marginalizing the Palestinian liberation
struggle, despite widespread rejection of normalization among the Arab
public.

A headline <https://www.al-akhbar.com/Lebanon/369634> in the Lebanese paper
*Al-Akhbar* from Wednesday asks: “Ein al-Hilweh: Does a ceasefire depend on
the reconciliation of Fatah and Hamas?”
Deepened humanitarian crisis

While plenty of ambiguity remains, intra-Palestinian and regional
complexities are certainly playing out in the neighborhoods of Ein
al-Hilweh, the boundaries of which are flashpoints of confrontation.

In August, UNRWA stated that “this localized escalation of violence in the
camp, which is located within the country’s third largest city, needs to be
understood in the context of regional, intra-Palestinian and host country
political dynamics.”

“The camp has come to be a magnifier of different actors vying for power
and control,” UNRWA added.

“Humanitarian needs amongst camp residents are high and rising, driven
largely by systemic discrimination over generations, failed governance
structures, unprecedented financial and economic crises affecting the
country, and the social and economic inequality experienced by Palestine
refugees.”

Given the protracted nature of the contradictions contributing to the
violence over the past months, some close to the situation in Ein al-Hilweh
reportedly believe that the fighting will continue.

In the meantime, UNRWA, which provides government-like basic services to
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, is on the verge of collapse
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-warns-catastrophe-palestinians-aid-dries>
after years of chronic underfunding amid increased need.

The consequences of an implosion of UNRWA is hard to fathom, as it would
reverse decades of human development gains and likely cause upheaval in
both Palestine and host countries – particularly, as the International
Crisis Group, a think tank that reflects US and other Western agendas,
observes
<https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/242-unrwas-reckoning-preserving-un-agency-serving-palestinian-refugees>,
“if Palestinians perceive that cuts signal the loss of their refugee
status.”

All of UNRWA’s eight schools housed in two compounds in Ein al-Hilweh have
been turned into bases
<https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/more-unrwa-schools-taken-over-armed-groups-southern-lebanon-refugee-camp>
for armed groups, preventing the return of nearly 6,000 students when the
new academic year begins early next month.

The agency hopes to upgrade other UNRWA schools to accommodate Palestinian
refugee children in the camp.

As of Thursday, four UNRWA installations serving as temporary shelters for
residents displaced by fighting were nearing their full capacity.

Some displaced residents were staying with relatives in the Sidon area or
in other camps or areas in Lebanon.
Specter of Nahr al-Bared

Ein al-Hilweh hasn’t been subjected to total destruction, as was the case
in Nahr al-Bared <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nahr-al-bared>, in
northernmost Lebanon, during and after a months-long battle between the
Lebanese Army and Salafi fighters that had infiltrated the refugee camp in
2007.

More than 27,000 Palestinian refugees were forced from their homes in Nahr
al-Bared, and thousands remain displaced
<https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/lebanon/nahr-el-bared-camp> years
later.

While the fate of Nahr al-Bared has not fallen on Ein al-Hilweh, which many
had feared, especially after the life-threatening injury of a soldier, the
ramifications of the current violence will reverberate far beyond the camp.

According to
<https://themedialine.org/mideast-mindset/palestinian-faction-wars-in-lebanon/>
a report published by the Lebanese paper *An-Nahar* in early August, “the
Palestinian Authority is aiming to consolidate its control over the
Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, in an effort to foil Hamas’ attempts
to overtake them.”

The paper added that the clashes “could pave the way to further violence,
most notably the Fatah movement’s demise.”
[image: A burned-out three-story building against a blue sky]

A deserted street and damaged buildings after heavy clashes between Fatah
and Islamist fighters in Ein al-Hilweh, 2 August.
Stringer DPA

That doesn’t appear to have happened. However, Hamas, with the protection
of Hizballah, has leveraged the crisis in Ein al-Hilweh “to position itself
as a mediator or influencer in ceasefire and security arrangements,” as
Lebanese journalist Souhayb Jawhar has pointed out
<https://www.newarab.com/analysis/behind-fighting-lebanons-ain-al-hilweh-refugee-camp>
.

A revival of the call to disarm Palestinian factions in Lebanon is likely
in the wake of the Ein al-Hilweh fighting.

After a bloody civil war and Israeli invasion in the 1970s and ’80s, there
are fears among some sectors in Lebanon that an increased presence of
Palestinian resistance groups in the country will turn it once again into
an arena for Palestinian armed confrontation with Israel.

This week 41 years ago, fighters with the Israel-allied Lebanese Forces
militia massacred as many as 3,000 Palestinian refugees
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/was-sabra-and-shatila-genocide/33941>
in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut.

The slaughter was made possible after a US-brokered ceasefire agreement
<https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/21/world/text-of-agreement-on-withdrawal-of-palestinian-forces-from-west-beirut.html>
reached weeks earlier stipulated that the Palestine Liberation Organization
had to withdraw its military and political personnel from Lebanon, leaving
civilians in the camps defenseless.

Meanwhile, tensions between Hizballah and Israel have heightened
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/31/us-might-mediate-lebanon-israel-border-dispute-white-house-adviser>
along Lebanon’s southern border in recent months, ripening conditions for
another full-blown confrontation like the 2006 war that resulted in more
than 1,100 fatalities in Lebanon, the vast majority of them civilians, and
the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure in the country.

That war ended in an unprecedented military defeat for Israel (*Haaretz*
military analyst Amos Harel branded
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-07-12/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israels-second-lebanon-war-remains-a-resounding-failure/0000017f-db21-df62-a9ff-dff7922a0000>
it “a resounding failure”) and marked a “historic and strategic
accomplishment” for the resistance, according to
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/15/hezbollah-and-israel-maintain-tense-peace-15-years-after-war>
Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
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