Palestinian in Exile

Blowback in Lebanon

The violence that has engulfed the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in northern Lebanon over the past few days, started after a night raid by internal security forces to arrest alleged bank robbers in Lebanon's second largest city, Tripoli. That turned into armed clashes between police and a small Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam. Within hours, the Lebanese army was pulled into the conflict when more than a dozen soldiers were ambushed and killed. The army surrounded and began shelling the camp where Fatah al-Islam are based - home to more than 30,000 refugees - with mounting casualties on all sides, including civilians.

The story of Lebanon's US-backed Siniora government and army battling an isolated group allegedly backed by Syria obscures a complex picture that has been years in the making, and which involves a peculiar social environment, Lebanese political manoeuvring, and the wider dynamics of an increasingly volatile region.

North Lebanon, especially Tripoli and Akkar, contains some of the country's most deprived areas, neglected by successive governments. Tripoli, a traditionally conservative Sunni city, and Akkar, a strikingly poor province, became fertile territory for the proselytising of Salafist and Sunni groups. But impoverished conditions do not explain the rapid empowerment of Sunni movements in recent years; political cover was needed - and was provided by pro-government forces. In the 2005 national parliamentary elections, Saad al-Hariri, the son of slain prime minister Rafik Hariri, appealed to Sunni sentiment to woo northern voters. Significant efforts were made to bring the Sunnis of Tripoli and Akkar under his wing and away from the area's traditional leaders. Fulfilling an electoral pledge, the new parliament pardoned jailed Sunni leader involved in violence in December 2000. Those clashes in Dinnieh between Islamist and the Lebanese army left dozens dead in a precursor of the violence of recent days.

Courting Sunni sentiment is a dangerous game. A major sign of trouble ahead had already emerged in February last year, when a protest against the cartoons belittling the prophet Muhammad turned violent and the Danish embassy was set ablaze in the fashionable Beirut district of Ashrafieh. Most of those protesting came from the impoverished areas of the north.

This picture becomes more complicated when the regional dimension is factored in. The invasion of Iraq has inflamed the Sunni-Shia divide and is changing the dynamics of the Middle East. Fear of Shia influence in Arab affairs has prompted many Sunni leaders to warn of a "Shia crescent" stretching from Iran, through Iraq, to south Lebanon. Several reports have highlighted efforts by Saudi officials to strengthen Sunni groups, to face the Shia renaissance across the region.

But building up Sunni groups to face the Shia challenge can easily backfire. While Islamist groups are sensitive to appeals to Sunni sentiment, they remain locked in their own agenda. Courted by regional players - Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia - and infiltrated by intelligence services, Islamist groups serve the needs of some without necessarily becoming servants to any.

Some perceive the fighting of recent days as a confrontation between regional forces - the US, Syria, Saudi Arabia - vying for control of the Lebanese political space. Others see it as a plan that went wrong, with Islamist groups escaping the control of the pro-government forces that nurtured them. And others perceive it as an attempt to draw the Lebanese army - regarded as the only genuinely national force in the country - into the fray of Lebanese politics.

The Siniora government is enfeebled. Claims that Syria is behind the current conflict have not so far been endorsed by the White House or other Arab leaders. The army, which has tried to remain neutral, is now muddied and its weaknesses made apparent to all.

The plight of thousands of Palestinian refugees trapped in the Nahr al-Bared camp echoes the Israeli bombing of Palestinian camps in occupied Palestine.Islamist activists are moved by the atrocities in the north and attacks on their fellow Islamist. Palestinian factions are fractious, weakened, and infiltrated by foreign agents, further destabilising security within the refugee camps. The relations between Palestinian groups and Lebanese authorities are strained, and tensions can easily spill outside the refugee camps. The dangers of a conflagration that could spread across the country are serious. The US once nurtured the mujahideen in Afghanistan, only to pay the price much later. In the dangerous game of sectarian conflict, everyone stands to lose.

Twenty years later, what was happening then to the Palestinians in Lebanon is happening to them in Palestine. Palestinians have been sequestered by the Israeli Army in no fewer than 220 discontinuous little ghettos, and subjected to intermittent curfews often lasting for weeks at a stretch. No one, young or old, sick or well, dying or pregnant, student or doctor, can move without spending hours at barricades, manned by rude and deliberately humiliating Israeli soldiers. These brutalised young Israeli conscripts trained to punish Palestinian civilians as the main part of their military duty? I think not.
No one and no force to check, much less prevent the daily incursions of which this particular feat of military daring was a part. Past years Israeli F-16s (generously supplied by the Bush administration) have regularly bombed and strafed Palestinian towns and villages, Guernica style, destroying property and killing civilians and security officials (there is no Palestinian army, navy or air force to protect the people); Apache attack helicopters (again supplied by the Bush's) have used their missiles to murder 77 Palestinian leaders, for alleged terrorist offences, past or future. A group of unknown Israeli intelligence operatives have the authority to decide on these assassinations, presumably with the approval on each occasion of the Israeli Cabinet and, more generally, that of the Bush's. The helicopters have also done an efficient job of bombing Palestinian Authority installations, police as well as civilian. During the night of 5 December 2002, the Israeli Army entered the five-storey offices of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in Ramallah, carried off the computers, as well as most of the files and reports, thereby effacing virtually the entire record of collective Palestinian life. In 1982 the same Army under the same commander entered West Beirut and carted off documents and files from the Palestinian Research Centre, before flattening the structure. A few days later came the massacres of Sabra and Shatila.
After years of barren peace discussions 65 per cent of Palestinians are unemployed and 70 per cent live on less than 2 dollars a day. Every day brings with it unopposable land grabs and house demolitions. The Israeli army even make a point of destroying trees and orchards on Palestinian land. Although five or six Palestinians have been killed in the last few months for every one Israeli, the obese old warmonger has the gall to keep repeating that Israel has been the victim of the same terrorism as that meted out by Bin Laden.
The crucial point in all this is that Israel has been in illegal military occupation since 1967; it is the longest such occupation in history, and the only one anywhere in the world today: this is the original and continuing violence against which all the Palestinian acts of violence have been directed. two children aged 3 and 13 were killed by Israeli bombs in Hebron, yet at the same time an EU delegation was demanding that Palestinians curtail their violence and acts of terrorism. five more Palestinians were killed, all of them civilian, victims of helicopter bombings of Gaza's refugee camps. To make matters worse, as a result of the 11 September attacks, the word 'terrorism' is being used to blot out legitimate acts of resistance against military occupation and any causal or even narrative connection between the dreadful killing of civilians (which I have always opposed) and Fifty plus years of collective punishment is proscribed.
Arafat's great mistake, a consequence of frustration and poor advice, was to try to make a deal with the occupation when he authorised 'peace' discussions between scions of two prominent Palestinian families and Mossad in 1992 at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge. These discussions were all to do with Israeli security: nothing was said about Palestinian security, nothing at all, and the struggle of his people to achieve an independent state was left to one side. Indeed, Israeli security to the exclusion of anything else has become the recognised international priority which allows General Zinni and Javier Solana to preach at the PLO while remaining totally silent on the occupation. The terrible and, in my opinion, stupid suicide raids against civilians in Haifa and Jerusalem over the weekend of 1 December should of course be condemned, but in order for the condemnation to make any sense the raids must be considered in the context of Abu Hanoud's assassination earlier in the week, along with the killing of five children by an Israeli booby-trap in Gaza - to say nothing of the houses destroyed, the Palestinians killed throughout Gaza and the West Bank, the constant tank incursions, the endless grinding away of Palestinian aspirations, minute by minute, for the past 36 years. In the end desperation only produces poor results, none worse than the green light George W. seem to have given Olmart when he was in Washington (all too reminiscent of the green light Al Haig gave in May 1982). With their support went the usual ringing declarations turning the people under occupation and their hapless, inept leader into world-wide aggressors who had to 'bring to justice' their own criminals even as Israeli soldiers were systematically destroying the Palestinian police structure which was supposed to do the arresting.
the believe that they can make a series of independent agreements with local warlords and divide 40 per cent of the West Bank and most of Gaza into several non-contiguous cantons whose borders the Israeli Army will control. How this is supposed to make Israel more secure eludes me, but not, alas, the people with the relevant power.
That leaves out the players, or groups of players, two of whom in his racist way Olmart gives no weight to. First, the Palestinians themselves who are far too intransigent and politicised finally to accept anything less than unconditional Israeli withdrawal. Israel's policies, like all such aggressions, produce the opposite effect to the one intended: to suppress is to provoke resistance. (an unimpressive and unpopular Arafat hanger-on called Abul Ala, much admired by Israelis for his 'flexibility'). After that, a succession struggle would ensue between other Arafat cronies such as Abu Mazen and two or three of the leading (and capable) security chiefs - notably Jibril Rajoub of the West Bank and Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza. None of these people has Arafat's stature, or anything resembling his popularity. Temporary chaos is the likely result: New groups are emerging, however: secular, hard-working, committed, dedicated to a democratic polity in an independent Palestine. Over these people, the PA has no control at all. It should be said that no one in Palestine is willing to accede to the Israeli-US demand for an end to 'terrorism', although it will be difficult to draw a line in the public mind between suicidal adventurism and resistance to the occupation so long as Israel goes on with its bombings.
The wall that is suffocating the Gaza strip compiled by the humiliation that is called peace and the PA will drive the secession straggle into full out bloody civil war that was the idea then that is the idea now, For long I did not grasp or understand the reasoning behind such in fighting but taking into facts the above disappointments and the constant humiliation tactics of the Israeli army, any immature and young person will fallow even the likes of Dahlan

Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh was quoted as saying this week that there was no intention of “dissolving the national unity government.” Haniyeh’s remarks coincided with remarks by his own deputy, Azzam al Ahmad, warning that “the government won’t survive more than three months” if the American-led, Israeli-enforced blockade of the nominally autonomous enclaves persisted.Earlier in the week, both Haniyeh and Hamas politburo chief Khalid Mash’al issued a plethora of statements warning that “Palestinians would resort to other alternatives” if the west continued to coerce and shun the Palestinian national unity government.The two leaders didn’t clarify what the contemplated “other alternatives” would be. However, it was amply clear that both were alluding to ending the already fragile ceasefire with Israel (which Israel itself is threatening to end, anyway) or perhaps embarking on a fully-fledged new intifada.It is abundantly clear though that the statements reflect profound indignation, stemming from the failure of the national unity government to end the hermetic blockade which has already pushed numerous Palestinian families to the brink of starvation.True, the crisis is occasionally mitigated by some irregular and noncommittal financial aid from some oil-rich Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.But this gives Palestinians only a false hope for a breakthrough that won’t be coming anytime soon.In other words, there is no light at the end of the tunnel and the reasons are clear.First, Israel, which is undergoing a severe political crisis as a result of the Winograd Report, is not willing to allow the Palestinians to have a truly viable and territorially-continuous state.Indeed, the continued expansion of Jewish-only colonies on stolen Arab land in the West Bank, especially in Israeli-occupied Arab East Jerusalem, is more eloquent and more reflective of Israel’s true stand than a hundred statements by Israeli leaders and officials expressing desire for peace. Actions, after all, speak louder.More to the point, the Israeli society itself is drifting menacingly toward right-wing jingoism, if not outright fascism. And the Israeli army, the backbone of the Israeli society, is on its way to becoming a “national-religious army” as a disproportionately high percentage of its officers are affiliated with the messianic and extreme religious camp.This reality finds many worrying expressions, particularly the undeclared but well-known alliance between the army and Jewish settlers in the West Bank where settlers are given a virtual carte blanche to steal Palestinian land and take over Palestinian homes and property as in Hebron.Second, it is manifestly clear that the Bush administration is preoccupied with the Iraqi quagmire as well as with the political and constitutional showdown with the Democrats at the domestic front, so much so that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is becoming of secondary importance.True, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice keeps visiting the region every few weeks. But her visits have produced virtually nothing. In fact, Rice’s visits have only served to deepen frustration on both sides, frustration at the failure to revive the moribund peace process and also at America’s enduring fiasco to do what it takes to make the promise of peace more realistic, namely to pressure Israel to give up the spoils of the 1967 war.Third, as to the European Union, whose rotating presidency is now assumed by Germany, the most pro-Israeli European state, it is equally plain that its overall position is more or less a carbon copy of the American policy. This nearly totally negative approach toward the Palestinians is expressed in constant EU refusal to lift the blockade of the Palestinian government and also in the EU reluctance to pressure Israel to unfreeze more than $700 million of Palestinian tax money held by the Jewish state in order to punish Palestinians for electing a political party not to its liking.Finally, the Arab states don’t lag far behind Europe, US and Israel in tormenting the Palestinians. This is clear from the persistent refusal of these states to allow national banks to transfer aid money to the cash-strapped PA, despite rhetorical claims to the contrary.In light of all this, one doesn’t have to be a great prognosticator to predict that the crisis facing the Palestinian people and its enduring just cause will exacerbate even further as Israel continues to blackmail us into giving up our national rights, including the right of return for Palestinian refugees uprooted from their ancestral homeland in 1948 and 1967.Hence, the PA and various Palestinian factions should be facing the hour of truth since the present situation is untenable.Indeed, if the goal of creating a Palestinian state on 100% of the occupied land is no longer possible, and this seems to be the case, the Palestinian leadership should immediately declare the death of the Oslo Accords and the two-state solution, and opt for the one-state solution whereby Jews and Arabs would live in a democratic, unitary and civic state extending from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean as equal citizens.True, Israel would vehemently object to this solution for ideological and other reasons. However, Israel, which has virtually and irreversibly killed the two-state solution, must bear full responsibility for its own actions.And the Palestinians are staying put. They will never leave their land, nor will they accept to live in claustrophobic townships and hapless enclaves which have more in common with detention camps than with anything else.