Fadi Tawil
AP / September 11, 2023
SIDON, Lebanon – An “immediate and lasting cease-fire” was declared Monday after a top Lebanese general met with officials from rival Palestinian factions, following days of fighting in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, which left several people dead and dozens wounded.
The new ceasefire failed to halt the fighting, however, residents and officials in the camp said in the hours after the agreement was announced. It was the latest in a series of cease-fires that only lasted for hours before fighting erupted again.
The announcement was made in Beirut by the General Security Directorate.
Gunfire and explosions were heard throughout the day inside the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp, claiming the life of at least one person. Stray bullets and shells hit residential areas in the country’s third-largest city.
The fighting that broke out Thursday night after nearly a month of calm in Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near the port city of Sidon between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah group and militant Islamist groups has left six people dead and more than 50 wounded according to medical officials and state media.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, shared its own tally on Sunday saying four people were killed and 60 others wounded.
Clashes erupted as Fatah and other allied militant factions in the camp had intended to crack down on suspects accused of killing Fatah military general, Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi, in the camp in late July.
One of the men suspected of being involved in Armoushi’s killing, Izzedine Abu Dawoud, was critically wounded Monday inside the camp and rushed to hospital where doctors announced him as “clinically dead,” Lebanese security officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Lebanese security officials and members of Fatah said they do not expect a permanent halt to the clashes in the immediate future, despite the new ceasefire.
Elias Farhat, a retired Lebanese army general who is now a researcher of military affairs, said no ceasefire will hold unless the suspects in Armoushi’s killing are handed over to Lebanese authorities for prosecution as demanded by a committee of Palestinian factions in the camp.
While some have called for the Lebanese army to intervene, Lebanese security forces generally do not enter the Palestinian camps, and Farhat said there has been “no political decision” to do so now.
Stray bullets hit the municipality building in Sidon damaging windows without hurting anyone, the state-run National News Agency said.
The public Lebanese University was closed and the Lebanese Army closed off the main highway that links Beirut with southern Lebanon near the camp and traffic was directed toward a coastal road due to the fighting.
“The city is suffering. The civilians in the camp are suffering,” Lebanese legislator who represents Sidon Abdul-Rahman Bizri said in an interview with The Associated Press. He added that the fighting may continue for the coming days with “no clear winner or loser … because the balance of power in the camp is very difficult and delicate.”
The Lebanese military said Sunday night that five soldiers were wounded after three shells hit an army checkpoint surrounding the camp, with one in a critical condition.
“We will not stand idle with what is happening in Ain al-Hilweh,” warned Maj. Gen. Elias al-Baysari head of the General Security Directorate in an interview with a local newspaper published Monday. “The situation in the camp is unbearable,” he said.
Al-Baysari later Monday hosted a meeting at his office in Beirut that included officials from several Palestinian factions to discuss the possibility of a new truce. After the meeting ended, the cease-fire was declared as well as a call to hand over the suspects in Armoushi’s killing to Lebanese authorities. The statement by General Security Directorate gave no further details.
Two of the combatting groups Sunday said they would abide by a cease-fire, though Fatah did not officially respond to those claims. It was unclear if a decision was reached during the meeting.
Ain al-Hilweh — home to some 55,000 people according to the United Nations — is notorious for its lawlessness, and violence is not uncommon in the camp. It was established in 1948 to house Palestinians who were displaced when Israel was established.
UNRWA said hundreds of families displaced from the camp have taken shelter in nearby mosques, schools and the Sidon municipality building.
Earlier this summer, street battles in the Ain al-Hilweh between Fatah and members of the extremist Jund al-Sham group and Shabab al-Muslim lasted for several days, leaving 13 people dead and dozens wounded, and ended after an uneasy truce was put in place on Aug. 3. The fighting also forced hundreds to flee their homes.
Lebanon is home to tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Many live in the 12 refugee camps that are scattered around the small Mediterranean country.
Associated Press writera Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Abby Sewell in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report
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Fighting intensifies in Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh camp despite truce talks
Al-Jazeera / September 11, 2023
Fighting between Palestinian factions have claimed at least 10 lives over the weekend, sources in the camp say.
At least 10 people have been killed and dozens wounded in renewed violence between rival groups in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, as stray bullets and shells hit residential areas in the country’s third-largest city Sidon.
The Ain al-Hilweh camp has been rocked by factional clashes since late July between the Palestinian mainstream movement Fatah and hardline groups. The first round left more than a dozen people dead.
Fighting resumed over the weekend after a month-long ceasefire and has since left at least 10 people dead, according to two Palestinian sources in the camp. Six of them were fighters from Fatah and another two were other group fighters, they said on Monday.
The two remaining victims were civilians, a Lebanese security source and two Palestinian sources said. One was killed on Saturday when a stray bullet from the clashes reached a town near the camp, the Lebanese security source said.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, shared its own tally on Sunday saying four people were killed and 60 others wounded. It called for an immediate halt to the violence.
Five Lebanese army soldiers were also wounded, one of them critically, when shelling hit two of their positions on the outskirts of the camp on Sunday, according to an army statement.
“We will not stand idle with what is happening in Ain al-Hilweh,” warned Elias al-Baysari, head of the General Security Directorate, in an interview with a local newspaper published Monday. “The situation in the camp is unbearable,” he said.
Al-Baysari later Monday hosted a meeting at his office in Beirut that included officials from several Palestinian factions to discuss the possibility of a new truce.
More than 50 others were wounded, according to medical officials and state media.
On Monday, gunfire and explosions were heard throughout the day inside the camp and stray bullets hit the municipality building in Sidon damaging windows without hurting anyone, the state-run National News Agency said.
The public Lebanese University was closed and the Lebanese Army closed off the main highway that links Beirut with southern Lebanon near the camp and traffic was directed toward a coastal road.
Dire humanitarian situation
Ain al-Hilweh is the largest of 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, hosting around 80,000 of up to 250,000 Palestinians countrywide, according to the United Nation’s Palestine refugee agency (UNRWA). The camps date back as many as seven decades to neighbouring Israel’s founding in 1948.
UNRWA said hundreds of families displaced from the camp have taken shelter in nearby mosques, schools and the Sidon municipality building.
Al-Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting near the camp in Sidon, said, described the situation as “desperate”.
“Hundreds of families escaped the fighting, they’ve left their homes in Ain al-Hilweh. Others remain trapped inside,” Khodr said.
In some neighbourhoods, it is too difficult to venture out to reach areas outside of the camp, she said.
“These people were poor to begin with. The majority of Palestinians in Lebanon … if they cannot work today, they cannot put food on the table,” Khodr said.
Many are relying on support from local charities. But even UNRWA is a “cash-strapped organization,” she added.
UNRWA appealed last week for $15.5m to repair infrastructure damaged in the last round of clashes in the camp, provide alternative education locations for children whose schools were damaged or occupied by fighters, and give cash assistance to people who have been displaced from their homes.
Khodr said it may need even more funding to repair additional damages reported over the weekend.
Separately, UNRWA said armed groups have taken over eight of their schools, forcing the agency to find alternatives to host students as the beginning of the school year nears.
The renewed violence has prompted fresh concerns that the clashes could spill over into the adjacent city of Sidon.
Residents fear a similar scenario to the northern Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared, where Lebanon’s army waged a 15-week onslaught to dislodge armed groups in 2007.
A senior Fatah official is set to land in Lebanon on Monday and the acting chief of Lebanon’s powerful General Security intelligence agency will hold an emergency meeting on the issue.
SOURCE: AL-JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
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Ain al-Hilweh conflict drags on despite ceasefire attempts
Nada Homsi
The National / September 11, 2023
Lebanese leaders say they are attempting to broker lasting truce.
Fierce clashes between Palestinian factions and armed extremists in Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest refugee camp for Palestinians, continued for a fourth day on Monday, despite continuing ceasefire attempts on both sides.
The Ain al-Hilweh conflict in Sidon has claimed seven lives and left at least 72 people injured since it reignited last week, according to Hamshari Hospital director Dr Riad Abu al-Einen.
At least one of those killed was a civilian, who was hit by a stray bullet in the nearby village of Ghazzieh.
More than 2,000 people have been displaced since Thursday, said Mohammad Safadi, a co-ordinator at the Musalli Mosque near Ain al-Hilweh – the central gathering point for camp residents forced out by the conflict.
“Right now, I have between 600 and 700 people staying here and we’re working on finding them accommodation in mosques and schools around the city,” he told The National.
Despite the announcement of an overnight ceasefire, by Monday morning the sound of machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades resumed echoing throughout a desolate Saida city, which hosts the Ain al-Hilweh camp.
Acting head of the national general security agency, Maj Gen Elias Al Bisari, said the conflict could destabilize Lebanon’s sovereignty.
“What is happening is very dangerous and if it expands, it will turn into an exhausting crisis. And Lebanon does not lack crises,” he said in a statement.
“Palestinian weapons are being used inappropriately and are threatening internal stability, and Palestinians are being displaced and killed.”
Army intervention threat
The conflict has threatened to spill into the city. On Sunday, five Lebanese soldiers were injured in the shelling of army unit positions near the camp.
In a statement, the Lebanese army warned concerned parties of “the consequences of exposing military positions and personnel to danger” and threatened that “appropriate measures” would be taken in response.
Fighting between Islamist extremist groups and the Fatah movement – the dominant faction in Ain al-Hilweh and the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – resumed last week after a month of tense calm.
Fatah and allied factions had promised forceful retribution against extremist parties – among them the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jund al-Sham – if they did not surrender the suspected killers of Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi, a high-profile Fatah military commander assassinated in late July.
The killing ignited fierce clashes between Palestinian factions, led by Fatah, and groups of armed Islamist extremists.
Those clashes, which ended early last month, resulted in 13 dead and at least 2,000 people displaced.
The powerful Palestinian party had given a late August deadline to surrender the killers, but the deadline passed with no one being handed over.
A Lebanese army source told The National the military was negotiating a ceasefire with rival camp factions, acknowledging the difficulty of achieving a truce that does not crumble overnight.
“As of now we’re not interfering inside and we’re taking the diplomacy route,” the source said. “It’s an internal dispute. If we go in, it could cause a big problem.”
The source added that military interference in the camp would be contingent on the decision of Lebanese leaders.
The Lebanese state leaves residents to handle security in Palestinian refugee camps due to a decades-old agreement that, for the most part, prevents the military from entering the sites.
But the Lebanese military does intervene in rare cases. In 2007 the Lebanese army fought a 15-week war against radical Islamist factions in the northern Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, which was destroyed, with thousands displaced.
Ain al-Hilweh is home to more than 50,000 registered Palestinian refugees, as well as to a number of the 30,000 Palestinian refugees displaced from Nahr al-Bared camp.
Nada Homsi is a correspondent at The National’s Beirut bureau
