Fight against militants agitates Lebanon's troubled camps

The Lebanese state has no jurisdiction over the camps, a result of an agreement dating back to 1969 that Lebanon still honors. The Lebanese government refuses to accept the possibility of the refugees being permanently housed in Lebanon, fearing that it will aggravate sectarian sensitivities.

Palestinians are forbidden from all but the most menial labor, and the Lebanese state bans the refugees from expanding the area of the allotted camps. It even refuses to allow construction material inside.

Widespread poverty has helped foster the emergence of radical Islamist groups in some of the camps, particularly Ain al-Hilweh on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon where 50,000 people are packed into less than a square mile.

One of the older militant Islamist factions is Esbat al-Ansar, which emerged in the early 1990s and is based in Ain al-Hilweh. Listed by Washington as an international terrorist group, Esbat al-Ansar carried out a number of attacks and robberies around Sidon in the late 1990s, including the gunning down of four Lebanese judges in a courtroom in 1999.

Esbat al-Ansar and a splinter faction called Jund ash-Sham are thought to have organizational links with Fatah al-Islam and include fighters who have fought in Iraq.

A year ago, the Lebanese government began attempting to improve conditions in the camps, setting up a liaison channel with Palestinian representatives to install proper sewage systems, electricity, and water networks and to construct new homes.

According to Khalil Makkawi, a former Lebanese diplomat and the government's representative in the talks with the Palestinians, about $23 million has been pledged by donor nations in the past year to upgrade conditions in Lebanon's camps.

"We have made considerable progress in improving human conditions," he says.

Infrastructure work has begun in one of Beirut's camps and will soon begin in Ain al-Hilweh, he says.

Yet, analysts say, while improvements will help, resolving the plight of the camps is ultimately a political matter and hinges on progress in the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Raising fears of spreading violence, an explosion went off in a shopping area in a Sunni Muslim sector of Beirut late Monday, wrecking parked cars and injuring seven people – a day after a bomb blast in a Christian part of the capital killed one woman. A Fatah al-Islam spokesman denied that the group was behind either bomb blast.

At the Nahr al-Bared camp, a convoy of six UN trucks carrying water, food, and medical supplies, took advantage of the temporary cease-fire Tuesday to enter the camp in the afternoon.

A Lebanese military intelligence officer said that Fatah al-Islam had threatened to bombard nearby Tripoli and the adjacent town of Minieh with rockets if the Army offensive continued.

The militants are believed to have a large stockpile of weaponry, and sources close to the group said that the fighters are in secure positions and prepared for a long battle. One sobbing woman who had just left the camp said that some 300 residents came out of hiding during the cease-fire and were demonstrating against Fatah al-Islam.

"They were calling on them to leave," she says, "but they opened fire on them."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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