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Lebanon's Palestinian militias were born of Israel's occupation. It's time to resolve both
Lebanon's Palestinian militias were born of Israel's occupation. It's time to resolve both

The National

time4 days ago

  • General
  • The National

Lebanon's Palestinian militias were born of Israel's occupation. It's time to resolve both

For a country trying to write a new chapter in its history, Lebanon faces an array of formidable challenges. While Israel continues to carry out air strikes and occupy Lebanese territory in the south, the new government in Beirut is trying to exert its authority nationwide – including in areas where its writ does not currently run. This difficult process is an important part of the country's efforts to recover and prosper. As Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in a keynote address to the Arab Media Summit in Dubai yesterday: 'Our country, exhausted by divisions, wars and patronage systems, has decided to regain itself, to regain its word, to regain its state'. A prime example of this challenge to the state is to be found inside Lebanon's 12 official Palestinian refugee camps. Located from Tripoli in the north to Tyre in the south, these poverty-stricken communities are home to more than 200,000 Palestinians displaced or born in exile owing to their expulsion from their homeland in previous decades by Israeli forces. Outside state control, these areas have been ruled by an array of armed factions since the 1969 Cairo Agreement, which ceded responsibility for their security to the Palestine Liberation Organisation. An informal understanding prohibits Lebanese security forces from even entering the camps. Generations later, this arrangement has added to instability within Lebanon. Some camps have become victims of outlaws, drug traffickers and extremists deciding to hide in plain sight there. Rival groups have clashed repeatedly; in September 2023, more than 2,000 people were displaced in Ain Al Hilweh – Lebanon's largest refugee camp – as Palestinian factions and armed extremists fought with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. This would be an intolerable situation for any country, especially one as volatile as Lebanon. On Monday, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun announced that a process to disarm Palestinian refugee camps will begin in mid-June. It will be a difficult task, and may not proceed on that time table. Lebanon's underfunded armed forces have a matter of weeks to bring the situation under control and reverse decades of entrenched support for armed groups with their own political agendas and, in some cases, foreign support. There are also deeper issues to be reckoned with. The broken situation in the camps is born out of Israel's continuing occupation of Palestinian land. Palestinians in Lebanon want to go to their homeland, not live a shadow existence on the fringes of Lebanese society. At the same time, Israel's bombardment and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza provides a difficult and sensitive context for Beirut's attempt to bring Palestinian weapons under control. Palestinians in Lebanon want to go home, not live a shadow existence on the fringes of Lebanese society The Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, met Mr Aoun in Beirut last week, and is seeking to co-ordinate the disarmament. But for the plan to have the greatest chance of success, it must be made clear that it is not about disempowering Palestinians or enabling one faction to dominate other – it is about restoring Lebanese sovereignty and stability. There will be those who will regard this process as a litmus test for how to handle another armed organisation outside state in control in Lebanon, namely Hezbollah. But the situation regarding the Iran-backed group has a different dynamic that does not allow for a one-size-fits-all solution. Nevertheless, the principle behind disarming Lebanon's many militias is key: that a country's legitimate government holds the monopoly over armed force. As Serhan Serhan, a member of the PA's Legislative Council and deputy secretary of Mr Abbas's Fatah faction in Lebanon said recently: "We are all under the ceiling of Lebanese law." If this is true, then there should be no room for any one faction to bring the house down.

Mapping Israel's military campaign in the occupied West Bank
Mapping Israel's military campaign in the occupied West Bank

Al Jazeera

time4 days ago

  • General
  • Al Jazeera

Mapping Israel's military campaign in the occupied West Bank

Israel is applying many of the tactics used in its war on Gaza to seize and control territory across the occupied West Bank during its Operation Iron Wall campaign, a new report says. Israel launched the operation in January. Defending what the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) termed 'by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada in the 2000s', the Israeli military claimed its intention was to preserve its 'freedom of action' within the Palestinian territory as it continued to rip up roads and destroy buildings, infrastructure, and water and electricity lines. The report by the British research group Forensic Architecture suggested Israel has imposed what researchers call a system of 'spatial control', essentially a series of mechanisms that allow it to deploy military units across Palestinian territory at will. The report focused on Israeli action in the refugee camps of Jenin and Far'a in the northern West Bank and Nur Shams and Tulkarem in the northwestern West Bank. Researchers interviewed and analysed witness statements, satellite imagery and hundreds of videos to demonstrate a systematic plan of coordinated Israeli action intended to impose a network of military control in refugee camps across the West Bank similar to that imposed upon Gaza. In the process, existing roads have been widened while homes, private gardens and adjacent properties have been demolished to allow for the rapid deployment of Israeli military vehicles. 'This network of military routes is clearly visible in the Jenin refugee camp and evidence indicates that the same tactic is, at the time of publication, being repeated in the Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps,' the report's authors noted. Israeli ministers have previously stated that they planned to use the same methods in the West Bank that have destroyed the Gaza Strip, leading to more than 54,000 Palestinians killed and the majority of buildings damaged or destroyed. In January, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would apply the 'lesson' of 'repeated raids in Gaza' to the Jenin refugee camp. The following month, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has control over much of the administration of the West Bank, boasted that 'Tulkarem and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujayea. Nablus and Ramallah will resemble Rafah and Khan Younis,' comparing refugee camps in the West Bank to areas in Gaza that have been devastated by Israeli bombing and ground offensives. 'They will also be turned into uninhabitable ruins, and their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries,' Smotrich said. Hamze Attar, a Luxembourg-based defence analyst, told Al Jazeera these tactics are not new in Palestinian territory, having first been deployed by the British during their mandate over historic Palestine, which preceded Israel's foundation in 1948. 'It's part of the 'counterinsurgency' strategy,' he said. 'Bigger roads [mean] easy access to forces – bigger roads, less congested battle management; bigger roads, less ability for fighters to escape from house to house.'About 75,000 Palestinians live in the Jenin, Nur Shams, Far'a and Tulkarem refugee camps. They were either displaced themselves or descended from those displaced during the Nakba (which means 'catastrophe') when roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes by Zionist forces from 1947 to 1949 as part of the creation of Israel. Now, at least 40,000 of those living in the West Bank refugee camps have been displaced as a result of Operation Iron Wall, according to the United Nations. As in Gaza, many of these people were forced from their homes on orders from the Israeli military, which researchers said have been 'weaponised' against the local population. Once an area had been cleared of its buildings and roads, it becomes a kill zone and the Israeli military is free to reshape and build whatever it likes without interference from residents, the report said. 'Such engineered mass displacement has allowed the Israeli military to reshape these built environments unobstructed,' the report noted, adding that when Palestinian residents did try to return to their homes after Israeli military action, they were often obstructed by the continued presence of Architecture researchers said Israeli attacks on medical facilities in Gaza have also spilled over into the West Bank. 'Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in the West Bank have included placing hospitals under siege, obstructing ambulance access to areas with injured civilians, targeting medical personnel, and using at least one medical facility as a detention and interrogation centre,' the report said. During Israel's initial attacks on the Jenin refugee camp on January 21, multiple hospitals were surrounded by the Israeli military, including Jenin Government Hospital, al-Amal Hospital and al-Razi Hospital, researchers noted. The following day, civilians and hospital staff reported that the main road leading to Jenin Government Hospital was destroyed by Israeli military bulldozers and access to the hospital was blocked by newly constructed berms, or land barriers, On February 4, reports from Jenin said the Israeli military was obstructing ambulances carrying injured people from reaching the hospital. Also carrying unmistakable echoes of Gaza was an UNRWA report in early February saying the Israeli military had forcibly co-opted one of the health centres at the UNRWA-run Arroub camp near Jerusalem as an interrogation and detention attacks on healthcare facilities were part of a wider campaign to damage civilian infrastructure in the West Bank, the Forensic Architecture report said, using armoured bulldozers, controlled demolitions and air attacks. Researchers said they verified more than 200 examples of Israeli soldiers deliberately destroying buildings and street networks in all four of the refugee camps with armoured bulldozers reducing civilian roads to barely passable piles of exposed earth and rubble. Civilian property, including parked vehicles, food carts and agricultural buildings, such as greenhouses, were also destroyed during Israeli military operations, they said.

Lebanon launches process to disarm Palestinian factions in refugee camps
Lebanon launches process to disarm Palestinian factions in refugee camps

Al Jazeera

time23-05-2025

  • Politics
  • Al Jazeera

Lebanon launches process to disarm Palestinian factions in refugee camps

A joint Lebanese-Palestinian committee tasked with the removal of weapons held by Palestinian factions in Lebanon's refugee camps has met for the first time to begin hashing out a timetable for disarming the groups. The Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee, a government body serving as interlocutor between Palestinian refugees and officials, met on Friday with Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in attendance. The group said that 'participants agreed to launch a process for the disarmament of weapons according to a specific timetable'. It added that it also aimed to take steps to 'enhance the economic and social rights of Palestinian refugees'. A Lebanese government source told the news agency AFP that disarmament in the country's 12 official camps for Palestinian refugees, which host multiple Palestinian factions, including Fatah, its rivals Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and a range of other groups, could begin in mid-June. Under a decades-old agreement, Lebanese authorities do not control the camps, where security is managed by Palestinian factions. The meeting comes as the Lebanese government faces increasing international pressure to remove weapons from the Iran-aligned Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel last year. 'The message is clear. There is a new era, a new balance of power, and a new leadership in Lebanon, which is pushing ahead with monopolising arms in the hands of the state,' said Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut. 'It has already begun to dismantle Hezbollah's military infrastructure in southern Lebanon, and the next phase appears to be the disarmament of Palestinian groups in camps before it addresses the issue of Hezbollah's weapons in the rest of the country,' she said. Earlier this week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, dominated by his Fatah party, visited Lebanon and said in a speech that the weapons in the camps 'hurt Lebanon and the Palestinian cause'. During Abbas's visit, he and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun announced an agreement that Palestinian factions would not use Lebanon as a launchpad for any attacks against Israel, and that weapons would be consolidated under the authority of the Lebanese government. Al Jazeera's Khodr signalled that several factions appeared to be against disarmement. 'While Abbas's Palestinian Authority may be recognised internationally as the representative body of the Palestinian people, there are many armed groups, among them, Hamas and [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad, who … believe in armed struggle against Israel,' she said. 'Without consensus among the factions, stability could remain elusive.'

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