Fight against militants agitates Lebanon's troubled camps
Poverty and hopelessness have helped foster the emergence of radical Islamist groups in Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps.
from the May 23, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
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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