Lebanon begins drive to defang militant groups
Lebanese
authorities are pushing to disarm
Palestinian
refugee camps as part of a drive to defang
Hizbullah
and other militant groups, potentially ending a decades-long Palestinian armed presence in the country.
Visiting Beirut in recent days, Palestinian president
Mahmoud Abbas
– whose Palestine Liberation Organisation and Fatah party have a powerful presence in Lebanon's impoverished refugee camps – agreed with Lebanese prime minister Nawaf Salam on 'completely closing the file of Palestinian weapons outside or inside the camps'.
In a joint statement with President Joseph Aoun, Abbas agreed that the 'time for weapons outside the authority of the Lebanese state is over'.
Abbas does not control Lebanon's most heavily armed factions, which include
Hamas
and smaller Islamist groups. But Lebanese and Palestinian authorities hope their official joint stance will pile pressure on factions reluctant to disarm, in a country whose army has long been a relatively weak entity rivalled by powerful militant groups.
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Lebanon – which has been devastated by Israel's latest military campaign against Hizbullah, while battling an economic crisis – needs foreign backing to rebuild, but donors such as the US want to see Hizbullah and Palestinian groups defanged.
The country has also faced continuing Israeli air strikes targeting Hamas members since Israel's ceasefire deal with Hizbullah, adding to pressure to push militants to disarm.
'Abu Mazen [Abbas] has no say over Hamas's weapons. But Abu Mazen is the legitimate president of the Palestinians before [international bodies] ... any Palestinians who rebel are then seen as rogue,' said Hesham Dibsi, a former PLO leader and director of the Tatweer Center for Studies.
'[The official Palestinian position] grants the Lebanese authorities the right to suppress anyone who goes against it.'
Some see the focus on Palestinians as a deflection from the thornier issue of weapons held by Hizbullah, a powerful military and political force.
But Lebanese authorities hope a push to disarm refugee camps – established after Palestinians were forcibly displaced by Israel's creation in 1948 – could show they mean business on Hizbullah. They also hope it would prevent Hizbullah from citing the existence of other armed groups in pushing back against calls for it to surrender its weapons.
'This is basically a test for what comes later. It's what we have to do with Hizbullah. That's how the Lebanese are seeing this,' said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Center in Beirut.
Armed Palestinian factions have run security in refugee camps since a 1969 agreement between Beirut and the PLO under which Lebanese forces withdrew from the camps.
The PLO's leadership was forced into exile by the 1982 Israeli invasion and its members handed over heavy weapons to the state in the early 1990s as Lebanon's bloody civil war, in which they played a major role, came to a close.
The organisation long ago gave up on using Lebanon as a base to resist Israeli occupation. Today, its cadres in Lebanon busy themselves with local governance in refugee camps, their light arms used mainly in clashes with other factions.
Groups backed by the Assad regime in Syria, such as the PFLP-General Command, maintained a heavier armed presence.
A third set of Palestinian factions – Islamists such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and smaller groups aligned with Iran's so-called axis of resistance – have grown powerful in recent decades, bolstered by Tehran and Hizbullah. Hamas, IJ, and the leftist PFLP sent fighters to back Hizbullah's side in its latest war with Israel.
That war ended with a ceasefire deal in which the Lebanese government agreed to disarm Hizbullah and implement a 2006 UN resolution calling for disarmament of non-state groups.
Lebanon's president and prime minister have both said it is their mission to 'restrict weapons to the hands of the state'.
While Hizbullah has allowed much of its arsenal south of the Litani river – about 30km from Lebanon's southern border – to be dismantled, it has resisted handing over other weapons.
The group, weakened by its conflict with Israel, has said relinquishing more weaponry would require 'dialogue' and could not begin before a full Israeli withdrawal.
In the meantime Lebanese authorities are seeking to defang Palestinian factions they view as a source of instability, now without cover from Assad and Hizbullah.
After the fall of Syria's Assad regime in December, the Lebanese army was quick to take over military bases held by Syria-backed Palestinian factions.
The government has also taken a tougher stance towards Hamas. It blamed the group for two rocket launches from Lebanon into Israel in March and warned 'against using Lebanese territory for anything that impacts Lebanese national security', threatening 'strict measures' for noncompliance.
Hamas has handed over all but one suspect in the attacks to Lebanese authorities.
Factions wary of disarmament insist any deal on weapons must include civil rights for Palestinians, who are banned from most jobs and from owning property outside camps. Fatah leaders maintain the two issues can be handled separately.
Ali Barakeh, head of national relations for Hamas, urged a 'comprehensive approach' to Palestinians in Lebanon, calling on Beirut to discuss social rights alongside security with all Palestinian factions.
He warned against 'restricting the discussion to the security framework'.
Many factions reluctant to disarm entirely have taken a similar tone.
In the PFLP offices in the tiny Beirut refugee camp of Mar Elias, political chief Abdullah Dinan said his group would support 'regulation' of their weapons in exchange for civil rights. But he opposed handing them over.
Yet Fatah cadres are hopeful. Wearing a PLO scarf, Mohammad Rachid Abu Rachid, who heads the committee on governance in southern Lebanon's Burj Shmali camp, was confident Abbas would push for improved conditions.
'Weapons are not the fundamental issue for us, rather it's the right to own property and basic civil rights,' he said.
Yet the Lebanese are unlikely to amend those laws, with Lebanon's sectarian powersharing system stigmatising anything seen as including majority-Sunni Palestinians. Beirut has promised to create conditions for a 'dignified life' for refugees, without offering details.
Another potential issue are small Islamist factions in the Ein el Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon, where fighting between them and Fatah in 2023 displaced thousands.
Showing the scale of the disarmament challenge, the plans have already sparked fiery rejections – even from groups relatively unknown to security services. A group calling itself 'Fatah-The Storm-The New Line' in Ein el Hilweh on Friday released a statement calling camp weapons 'a red line' and denouncing efforts to remove them.
Lebanese and Palestinian authorities set up a joint committee on implementation and hope to start disarmament this summer. But it remains unclear what that will look like.
Anis Mohsen, a Palestinian analyst and editor in Beirut, said: 'What's the plan? There's no plan. So what's being said now is purely a cover for the inability to implement something else ... to cover up their inability to take away Hizbullah's weapons.' − Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
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