AIN EL-HILWEH, Lebanon, 21 May 2003 — An uneasy calm returned to Ain El-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon yesterday after factional fighting which dealt a serious blow to the dominance of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. Fatah, six of whose members were killed in Monday’s clashes, signed a ceasefire deal with the fundamentalist groups Osbat Al-Nour and Osbat Al-Ansar, which appears on a US terrorist organization list.
Tensions have been high at the camp since last summer when Fatah began cracking down on Islamists with suspected links to Al-Qaeda, and Muslim radicals attacked Fatah’s camp headquarters in August 2002, killing a Fatah member. Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian camps are not controlled by the Lebanese security forces and host an array of armed groups.
Osbat Al-Nour leader Abdullah Shreidi was shot and seriously wounded by Fatah gunmen in the squalid camp on Saturday, as Fatah declared its intention to eliminate the fundamentalists. The fundamentalist groups decided to strike back first, again targeting Fatah’s headquarters and causing serious damage.
The rival groups’ overnight agreement was reached after mediation by Lebanese Islamists leader Sheikh Maher Hammoud, who negotiated the withdrawal of the warring militias to either side of the camp which holds 65,000 people. The deadly fighting, with automatic weapons and anti-tank rockets, erupted Monday at the camp 43 kilometers south of Beirut.
Several hundred terrified refugees fled the camp during the fighting, which also killed one of the fundamentalist fighters and a civilian, and wounded 25 people, mainly civilians. Serious damage was also caused to the camp, the largest in Lebanon. “The plan to wipe out the Islamists in Ain El-Hilweh has been stopped in its tracks and I hope that reason will prevail over violence,” Sheikh Mohammad Khattab, a moderate who took part in the negotiations, told AFP.
A Fatah official said the group agreed to the ceasefire for the sake of the civilians, accusing the Islamists of being heedless in this respect. “They put their whole force into the battle,” he said, adding that they had benefited from financial, material and operational help from Islamic Jihad,” another fundamentalist group. But a military expert said the fundamentalists had fought tenaciously, demonstrating their determination not to be overcome by Fatah, which had been surprised by their power and tactical skill.
“The ceasefire has strengthened the position of the fundamentalists. If the fighting resumes, no one, and especially not Fatah, can claim to dominate,” a senior Palestinian official belonging to none of the rival groups commented. “The camps will have to accommodate all the Palestinian factions, secular and Islamist” in a tenuous balance “which must last as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not resolved.”
The official warned that if the crackdown on the fundamentalists had been ordered by Arafat, it was a serious mistake, which Syria and Lebanon, no friends of the Palestinian leader, would not permit. A Fatah official agreed that neither Beirut or Damascus, which controls Lebanon politically, wanted a clear winner. Arafat’s representative in Lebanon, Sultan Abul Aynain, was still crying victory yesterday, pointing to the fact that Shreidi was physically and politically hors de combat following the attack on him.
Analysts say the clashes amount to a battle for control of the camp, where friction between Islamists and mainstream Palestinian factions has been mounting for weeks. “We are maintaining a ceasefire based on a decision by Islamist groups in camp,” said one Osbat Al-Ansar official, who goes by the name Abu Obeida. “We have taught them an important lesson and are ready to defend Islam if the infidels renew their assault on us,” he said.
