Palestinian Arms: What Guarantees the Success of Disarmament?

Asharq Al-Awsat

4 days ago

In mid-June, the Lebanese authorities will begin receiving weapons handed over by Palestinian factions operating in refugee camps, starting with the camps in Beirut and its southern suburbs. By implementing this decision, Lebanon will end a dangerous chapter of history that began in the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967. Through the 'Cairo Agreement' of 1969, Lebanon formally ceded its sovereignty, with 'Fatahland' declared in the Arkoub region (in the south of the country) before gradually expanding as the camps in Lebanon were transformed into dangerous military enclaves.
Primarily an initiative of the Palestinian Authority, disarming the Palestinian factions reinforces Lebanon's efforts to assert its sovereignty and turn the page on a history of these factions' abuses. Abu Mazen had adopted this position a year ago. 'Palestinian refugees are guests of the Lebanese state,' he regularly reiterated, stressing the need for Palestinians to return the favor in recognition of everything the Lebanese people have offered to the Palestinian cause. However, at the time, the Lebanese ignored his statements and complied with Hezbollah's wishes.
It is worth noting that the Palestinian Authority's position has been that the refugees did not need weapons since the Oslo Accords. Indeed, they no longer had a resistance project nor a front with Israel in Lebanon. However, Hezbollah shielded these armed factions and exploited them to serve its interests, turning the camps into a refuge for criminals, terrorists, and fugitives. Lebanon- its institutions, army, and people- has suffered greatly as a result, as have the refugees themselves.
On 8 June 1999, the Lebanese judiciary was shaken by the assassination of four judges at the South Lebanon Court of Appeal, where two gunmen shot them as they were sitting on the bench. The killers fled to the ʿAyn al-Ḥilwah camp near Sidon. Only many years was an indictment issued. In 2017, eighteen years after the crime, the terrorist group Asbat al-Ansar was found guilty, with the court concluding that its leader, Abou Muḥjin, had ordered the attack 'to undermine the Lebanese state.'
In mid-May 2007, security forces raided several sites harboring fugitives in Tripoli. On the 20th of May, Fatah al-Islam militants infiltrated a military post and killed twenty-seven soldiers in their sleep. It later emerged that the orders came from the extremist Shaker al-Absi, the leader of the group that had seized the Nahr al-Bared camp and that he had managed to temporarily cut Tripoli off from Dinniyeh and Akkar (north Lebanon). The army paid a heavy price. Hundreds were killed and wounded in the battle the army waged to purge the camp of these terrorists who had used civilians as human shields. Hezbollah's intentions were exposed during this episode, as it drew a red line in the face of the authorities and the army's decision to end this perilous state of affairs.
In the interval between Sidon judges' assassination and the Nahr al-Bared terrorism, the Lebanese National Dialogue Conference before the July 2006 war. At the conference, it was decided that Palestinian factions operating outside the camps would be disarmed as a first step that would be followed by addressing the arms inside the camps. Hezbollah quickly reneged on the agreement, however. Over the years, Ayn al-Ḥilwah camp and others have witnessed clashes that claimed innocent lives as Hamas, with Hezbollah's backing, sought to take control of Lebanon's largest camp in the country after having gained the upper hand over the PLO in the two camps in Tyre, Al-Buss and Rashidiya. It is from those camps that rockets were launched recently- in an incident that the enemy exploited to inflict more death and destruction.
There are several dimensions to the Palestinian Authority's move to delegitimize all the armed factions in the camps. Mahmoud Abbas, who has been insisting on placing the camps under the authority of the Lebanese state for years, as well as calling for a reevaluation of how refugees are managed, probably hopes to prevent intra-Palestinian strife preemptively. This was echoed by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who said 'The strength of the Palestinians today does not lie in weapons but in international recognition and diplomacy.'
The PLO is keenly working to prevent the kind of Lebanese-Palestinian strife that the so-called 'Resistance Axis' has often threatened, and these efforts are appreciated. Abbas's visit to Lebanon and his support for the country's efforts to restore its sovereignty have provoked the remnants of that Axis. Some circles are claiming that the Palestinian president 'only has influence over his own faction (i.e., Fatah),' and that if Fatah were to disarm, the camps would fall under the control of extremists, and that the weapons of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are protected by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, which refuses to hand over its own arms, understands that the disarmament of Palestinian factions undercuts its broader strategy and its effort to turn back the clock. That is why its top brass is giving triumphalist speeches of defiance and denial, refusing to recognize the implications of Lebanon's political earthquake and the major shift in regional power dynamics. It may seek to obstruct Palestinian factions' disarmament even if that means triggering clashes.
It is in this light that we should view the decision to begin collecting weapons from the Beirut camps rather than those in Tyre, south of the Litani River. The key to success, however, is a firm commitment by the Lebanese state to enforcing the state's sovereignty. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam is clearly taking this approach. He has not been mincing his words recently: 'The era of exporting the Iranian revolution is over, and we will keep quiet about any non-state actor's arsenal.'