Lebanon does not need this latest round of violence. At least 50 people have died in fighting in and around a Palestinian refugee camp — Nahr El-Bared — on the coast, 12 miles north of Tripoli. Gunbattles erupted when the Lebanese authorities sought to arrest suspects in a bank robbery. Up to 300 members of the Fatah Al-Islam are believed to be in the camp into which, by agreement, the Lebanese police and army have not entered in the past. The tragedy is that the fighting is inevitably causing casualties among refugees trapped within the camp, the perimeter of which the Lebanese Army now seems to have secured.
Some sources say the militants are linked to Al-Qaeda while others cite the Syrian government. The authorities have tightened the security cordon around the camp while there is suspicion that Fatah Al-Islam may have been responsible for this week’s bombing in the Christian quarter of Beirut. The militants are already suspected of carrying out two bus bombings in that area in February. Those who cite a Syrian connection see the unrest as being timed to coincide with the release of the international tribunal’s findings into the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri which has been widely blamed on Damascus. Analysts who suspect an Al-Qaeda connection — which has in the past been denied by Fatah Al-Islam who say only that they backed its aims — suggest that there is a deeper agenda being played out in this violence.
Both points of view however overlook the basic issue that the Nahr El-Bared camp is on Lebanese territory and contains some 30,000 of the 350,000 Palestinian refugees to whom the country gave shelter in the wake of the creation of Israel in 1948. Two or more generations of Palestinians have grown up in such camps and they know no other home.
But either as guests or as members of Lebanese society with which they have integrated, they owe a duty to the government and people of Lebanon. To have a fiefdom where the writ of Lebanese law does not run is to invite the arrival and growth of militants such as Fatah Al-Islam. It simply is not the case that this small violent group represents the views of the majority of Palestinians in the camp. The group may, however, have been able to seize control of the community through intimidation because the authorities were not there to challenge them and to protect people from their threats.
The Lebanese Army, which has lost at least 20 of its own men, has been ordered to return fire. Since the militants are in densely packed housing, innocent casualties have been inevitable. Whether the use of force was the wisest course is questionable since the resulting casualties may radicalize formerly moderate individuals. The solution clearly lies in mediation. The Lebanese must not be lured into causing bloodshed on the scale of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. That would be the only way the militants could possibly justify their violent behavior.
