Abby Sewell & Fadi Tawil
AP / August 3, 2023
SIDON, Lebanon – The caretaker Lebanese prime minister called the Palestinian president on Thursday to demand an end to the volatile situation in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, warning that the army may have to intervene to stop the days long fighting that has left dozens dead and wounded.
The deadly clashes between Palestinian factions in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near the southern port city of Sidon have been going on since Sunday, though a tentative calm returned to the camp and surrounding area on Thursday, after a night of renewed clashes.
In his telephone call with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called the fighting a “flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty. Mikati also said it was unacceptable for the warring Palestinian groups to “terrorize the Lebanese, especially the people of the south who have embraced the Palestinians for many years,” according to a statement released by his office.
The latest fighting in Ain al-Hilweh, which is home to about 50,000 people, has pitted Abbas’ Fatah party against Islamist groups Jund al-Sham and Shabab al-Muslim. Fatah has accused the Islamists of gunning down a Fatah military general, Abu Ashraf al Armoushi, in the camp on Sunday.
The fighting has so far killed more than a dozen people, wounded many more and displaced thousands.
In Sidon, outside the camp’s borders, around 100 camp residents who had fled the clashes were sheltering in a nearby mosque on Thursday. Sheikh Ahmad Nader said around 2,000 people had sheltered at the mosque since the beginning of the clashes.
“We are tired of all of this,” said Mohamed Sabakh, an Ain al-Hilweh resident staying in the mosque with his family. “We have children.”
Even outside the camp, Sabakh said, they feel trapped by the fighting. “Look around you, all the stores are closed. People are locked down in their houses. There is nowhere to get bread even, all the roads are closed.”
Dorothee Klaus, director of the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Lebanon said in a statement Thursday that 600 people displaced from the camp are staying in two of the agency’s schools, in Sidon and in Mieh Mieh, another nearby camp.
“We have not been able to enter the camp and deliver much needed assistance,” she said, noting that some 360 of UNRWA’s staff live in the camp, where some were trapped and one was injured in the clashes.
Dr. Riad Abu al-Einein, head of Al-Hamshari Hospital near the camp, told The Associated Press that the hospital had received the body of a person who was killed in clashes on Wednesday night, bringing the total number killed in the battles to 13.
If the situation continues, he said, “it will affect not only the families in the camp but all of the people in Sidon, especially as there were several rocket-propelled grenades and gunshots hit residential areas in the city.”
Maher Shabaita, head of Fatah in the Sidon region, confirmed that one of the group’s members was killed in Wednesday night’s clashes.
He said Fatah fighters had defended themselves after the Islamist groups attacked one of Fatah’s centers in the camp, breaking a cease-fire agreement reached Monday, in what he described as part of a “project to destroy the camp and transform the camp into a camp of militants, possibly a camp of terrorists.”
Palestinian factions in the camp have formed an investigative committee to determine who was responsible for Armoushi’s killing and hand them over to the Lebanese judiciary for trial, he said.
Lebanese soldiers generally do not enter the Palestinian camps, which are controlled by a network of Palestinian factions, and have stayed out of the latest conflict in Ain al-Hilweh. In 2007, the Lebanese army battled Islamist extremists in another Palestinian camp, Nahr al-Bared, in north Lebanon, razing most of the camp in the process.
Elias Farhat, a retired Lebanese army general who is now a researcher in military affairs, said it was unlikely that the army would intervene in the Ain al-Hilweh because — unlike in Nahr al-Bared — the combatants have not directly targeted the army.
Sewell reported from Beirut; AP writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report
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Mikati threatens army intervention if Ain al-Hilweh conflict not contained
Nada Homsi
The National / August 3, 2023
Lebanese caretaker PM says continued clashes in Palestinian refugee camp is ‘flagrant violation’ of country’s sovereignty.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister on Thursday threatened army intervention to stem days of heavy fighting between rival factions in the country’s largest Palestinian refugee camp which has left at least 13 dead and dozens injured.
In a phone call to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas – also the head of the Fatah party, which wields considerable power in Lebanon’s refugee camps – prime minister Najib Mikati demanded an end to armed clashes which have threatened to spill out of the Ain al-Hilweh camp and into the coastal city of Saida.
“The army and all of Lebanon’s security forces are going to perform the required role in maintaining security and halting the fighting,” Mikati told Abbas, according to a statement released by his office.
Mikati called the fighting a “flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty” and said it was unacceptable for the warring Palestinian groups to “terrorize the Lebanese”.
Already the clashes have resulted in dozens injured and thousands of people displaced from the camp, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees. Hundreds of families are sheltering in the agency’s schools and in mosques until it is safe to return to the camp.
Ain al-Hilweh is notorious for harbouring fugitives and Islamist gangs. The camp has been the site of a power struggle between Palestinian factions and a network of extremists for over a decade.
Two people were killed and around 10 injured in renewed fighting between Islamist insurgent groups and Palestinian factions overnight, according to a member of the Popular Committees, a coalition of representatives that run the camp, on Thursday – bringing the death toll up to 13.
“It was a very bleak night. The clashes lasted until dawn,” he told The National.
“People can’t take it anymore,” he added. “We fall asleep every night to the music of bombs.”
The fighting, which has continued despite a ceasefire being agreed on Monday, had subsided by Thursday morning.
While clashes between rival factions are not uncommon, this week’s battles have been especially ferocious due to assassination of high-profile Fatah commander Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi and four of his bodyguards on Sunday.
Fatah identified the assailants as members of the militant group Jund al-Sham and allied groups.
Palestinian political officials have warned that a long-term ceasefire in the camp would be on the condition of the surrender of Armoushi’s killers.
While periods of calm have punctuated the camp’s atmosphere over the last few days, heavy fighting has routinely continued to erupt.
Videos of the battle shared with The National by camp residents showed a series of rockets hurtling overhead, while explosions were heard in the distance.
Fatah, the strongest political faction in Lebanon’s Palestinian camps, has for years attempted to contain the presence of outlaws and smaller networks of insurgents who seek to gain control of Ain al-Hilweh.
Asbat al-Ansar, an Islamist fundamentalist group with an operations base in the camp and allied with the Islamist militant groups accused of killing Armoushi, issued a statement distancing itself from this week’s clashes and claimed the ceasefire was broken by Fatah.
“We were surprised, at exactly nine o’clock this evening, by a violent attack on our centres and mosques in Al-Ta’ara neighbourhood and Al-Safsaf neighbourhood by unruly elements of the Fatah movement,” it said.
The group added that it refused to engage in clashes between Fatah and Islamist factions despite the death of one of its own members this week.
“We assure our Palestinian and Lebanese people that we have not and will not be dragged into these clashes, whatever the price,” the group said, calling on political leaders to find an end to the conflict.
Ain al-Hilweh is home to more than 50,000 registered refugees. Many of them came from coastal towns in northern Palestine.
Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps present fertile ground for fugitives and outlaw groups to flourish owing to a contentious decades-old agreement that, for the most part, prevents Lebanon’s military from entering them.
But the Lebanese military does intervene in some rare cases. Notably, Ain al-Hilweh is also home to some of the 30,000 Palestinian refugees displaced from the Nahr al-Bared camp, which was destroyed in 2007 during 15 weeks of fighting between the Lebanese army and extremist groups.
Some of those militants expanded into Ain al-Hilweh following the conflict.
Nada Homsi is a correspondent at The National’s Beirut bureau
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Lebanon warns army may intervene if Palestinian faction clashes continue
Al-Jazeera / August 3, 2023
Prime Minister Mikati told Palestinian President Abbas the clashes were a ‘flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty’.
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has threatened to send in the Lebanese army to the country’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, where fighting in recent days has killed more than a dozen people, wounded many more and displaced thousands.
In a phone call, Mikati urged the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas to ensure hostilities between Palestinian factions at the Ain al-Hilweh camp cease.
Mikati called the clashes a “flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty” and said that it was unacceptable for the groups to “terrorize the Lebanese, especially the people of the south who have embraced the Palestinians for many years”, according to a statement released by his office.
The fighting near the southern port city of Sidon has been going on since Sunday, but there was some calm on Thursday.
Abbas’s Fatah party has accused the armed groups Jund al-Sham and Shabab al-Muslim of gunning down a Fatah military general, Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi, in the camp.
People have fled to nearby mosques and schools to escape the violence.
“We are tired of all of this,” said Mohamed Sabakh, an Ain al-Hilweh resident staying in one such mosque with his family. “We have children.”
Even outside the camp, stores and roads are closed, trapping people, Sabakh also said.
Dorothee Klaus, director of the United Nations refugee agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, in Lebanon said Thursday that 600 people displaced from the camp are staying in two of the agency’s schools, in Sidon and in another nearby camp, Mieh Mieh.
“We have not been able to enter the camp and deliver much-needed assistance,” she said, adding that nearly 360 of UNRWA’s staff live there, some still trapped and one injured in the clashes.
A ceasefire agreement reached Monday was broken by the armed groups when they attacked one of Fatah’s centres in the camp, part of a “project to destroy the camp and transform the camp into a camp of militants, possibly a camp of terrorists”, said Maher Shabaita, head of Fatah in the Sidon region.
Palestinian factions in Ain al-Hilweh have formed an investigative committee to figure out who was responsible for al-Armoushi’s killing, and will hand them over to the Lebanese judiciary for trial, he said.
Ain al-Hilweh is one of 12 camps established in Lebanon in 1948 for Palestinian refugees after Israel was created.
Following a 1969 agreement between Lebanon and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Lebanese army largely avoids entering the camps, but some Lebanese officials have called for the army to take control of them in the wake of the recent clashes.
Ain al-Hilweh, home to about 50,000 people, has seen many bouts of violence over the decades, both interfactional fighting, as well as between Palestinian factions and Lebanese forces.
SOURCE: AL-JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
