Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2006, pages 15, 39

Beirut Bulletin

Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon Divided Over Representation, United on Demands

By Samaa Abu Sharar

AFTER A 13-YEAR hiatus in diplomatic relations, the re-opening of a Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Beirut could have been a dream come true for Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, who desperately need a representative to effectively negotiate their numerous demands with Lebanese authorities.

The nearly 400,000 refugees—an estimated 10 percent of Lebanon’s population—have been without a representative since 1993, when Shafiq al-Hut resigned in protest of the Oslo accords. The office’s re-opening on May 15 of this year, however, only reinforced the divisions among the various Palestinian factions in Lebanon. The marked absence of representatives from Hamas and other Palestinian groups during the high-profile event accentuated the dispute over the crucial issue of Palestinian representation in Lebanon.

Despite the many differences dividing the Palestinian groups, however, there is a general consensus that the issue of who will represent Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is one that must be resolved. “Clearly there is a problem over Palestinian representation in the country,” explained Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon. “There are those who insist the PLO is the sole representative of the Palestinian people, even though some main Palestinian factions have not been part of the PLO since it was founded, such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad [which did not then exist].”

Other groups, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), left the PLO over objections to certain actions taken by the PLO leadership. In adddition, the 1992 alliance against the Oslo accords includes a number of factions outside the framework of the PLO.

Despite its international recognition as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the PLO is viewed by several of the 17 existing Palestinian groups in Lebanon as being in desperate need of reform in order to meet the challenges and realities on the ground—including the Hamas victory in January parliamentary elections in the occupied Palestinian territories and its resulting control of the parliament and government.

Because the majority of Palestinian groups agree with Hamdan that “a referential framework for Palestinians in Lebanon that would embrace all Palestinian factions should be formed,” negotiations are underway with Fatah leaders to convince them of this approach.

Establishing such a framework, Hamdan maintained, would prevent agreements with the Lebanese government from being infringed. And considering the crucial issues dividing the Palestinian factions in Lebanon, many of these accords could easily be broken. The most immediate issue at hand involves the disarmament of Palestinian groups both within and without the refugee camps, as well as the dismantling of military posts outside the camps. Participants in the ongoing Lebanese National Dialogue have given a deadline of six months for this issue to be resolved.

Two of the factions concerned are Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-GC and Fatah Al Intifada. Based in Damascus, with strong ties to the Syrian regime, both are widely viewed by Lebanese authorities as implementing a Syrian agenda in Lebanon. Two incidents this year only served to reinforce this view. A Jan. 9 shooting in the southern Lebanese town of Naameh, where two municipal policemen were seriously wounded by gunfire from PFLP-GC militants, shone the spotlight on Palestinian weapons deployed outside refugee camps. Even though the PFLP-GC was quick to hand over the suspected gunman to the Lebanese army, the incident was widely viewed as another attempt by Syria to destabilize its neighbor.

More recently, a May 17 gun battle between Fatah Al Intifada and the Lebanese army in the Bekaa village of Yanta, near the Syrian border, resulted in the death of a Lebanese army officer and a Palestinian militant. From his headquarters in Damascus, Abu Khaled Al Amleh, vice-secretary of the Central Committee of Fateh Al Intifada, accused an officer loyal to anti-Syrian MP Walid Jumblatt, head of the Progressive Socialist Party, of having instigated the clashes. The accusation was not well received in Beirut.

In a recent interview with the Beirut daily Al Nahar, Ambassador Khalil Mekawi questioned why Lebanon must put up with this unusual and illegal arrangement. “Give us one Arab country, including Syria, that would allow a force other than its own military forces to establish tunnels and military camps in addition to continuously fortifying its military posts on its land,” he challenged.

While they received a great deal of media attention, the two shooting incidents were quickly contained through contacts between the Lebanese authorities and the Palestinian groups involved, in order to avoid further escalation on the ground. The PFLP-GC’s representative in Lebanon, Anwar Raja, however, repeatedly has said that his organization will not agree to disarm before the Lebanese government grants Palestinians living in refugee camps their basic rights. Beirut has rejected such talk, insisting the two developments must come hand in hand.    

But several political analysts believe the question of disarming Palestinians in Lebanon is tightly linked to the current tense relations between Lebanon and Syria. Noting that it is one of the remaining cards Syria still holds in Lebanon, they say there will be no real solution to the problem until relations between the two countries improve. This view gained added credibility with news coming out of Cairo, where, on a recent visit, Speaker of the House Nabih Berri reportedly solicited help from the Egyptian government and the Arab League to improve relations with Syria and disarm the various Palestinian groups.

Given the edgy and complex situation in Lebanon, as well as the explosive state of affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories—which also has taken its toll here—Palestinian groups desperately need to achieve a solution before things get out of hand.

Racing against time, Abbas Zaki, head of the new PLO office in Beirut, has been establishing contacts with the various Palestinian factions in an attempt to form a unified group. Shortly before Zaki assumed his new post, Fatah’s representative in Lebanon, Sultan Abuleinein, told the Washington Report that the solution to the dilemma of representation is for the head of the PLO office to chair the delegation. This, however, fails to resolve the underlying problem. Since the new representative is a member of Fatah, many of the Palestinian groups say this just brings them back to square one.

According to Abu Fadi Hamad, secretary of Fatah Al Intifada in Lebanon—who, despite his organization’s differences with Zaki, attended the PLO opening—the Palestinian organizations have agreed on the demands to present to the Lebanese authorities, but not on whom they want to represent them. “We really need a magical recipe for this persisting problem, but we will get there,” he said optimistically. “We don’t have a choice, we have people to think about.”

And, of course, it’s really the people who are paying the high price for the lack of agreement among their leaders. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who live under extremely harsh conditions and are deprived of numerous human rights don’t care who represents them. What they care about are better living conditions that would enable them to break out of a vicious cycle in order to live in dignity until their return home. As long as their leaders are unable to reach an agreement, however, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will continue to be deprived of their very basic rights.

Samaa Abu Sharar is a free-lance journalist based in Beirut.

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