Militants stir in Lebanese outposts

Abu Amine, who says he has fought with Palestinian groups since 1965, adds that the PFLP-GC's weapons are for defending Palestinians in the refugee camps. "The minute the Lebanese government gives us our rights to live an honest and honorable life in this country, we will hand over our weapons to the Lebanese Army," he says.

Outposts like this have existed since the early 1970s under Syrian protection until Damascus disengaged from its tiny neighbor in April 2005. Most of the bases are linked to Syria by a maze of unguarded trails that snake across the mountains.

Eighteen months ago, the Lebanese Army tightened its grip around the bases – five belonging to the PFLP-GC, 10 to Fatah Intifada, and one to As-Saiqa – setting up checkpoints and new positions to monitor movement.

The hilly area between Yanta and Deir al-Ashayer villages in southeast Lebanon – home to several Fatah Intifada outposts – has been declared a military zone by the Lebanese Army and cut off to all but local residents. Lebanon's daily Al-Mustaqbal reported last week that Syrian troops had penetrated two miles into Lebanon near Halwa, an area where the joint border is disputed, and were building fortifications, adding to the tensions in the area.

UN report claims militants are rearming

At the end of June, a UN report on the resolution that ended last summer's Hizbullah-Israel war found that the PFLP-GC and Fatah Intifada had reinforced their positions in the Bekaa Valley after fighting broke out between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam in mid-May. Citing a detailed intelligence report compiled by the Lebanese Army, the UN said weapons including rockets, mortars, and antitank guns had been deployed in the bases.

At a PFLP-GC base on a 3,000-foot plateau over-looking the village of Qussaya in the eastern Bekaa, the group has installed multi-barreled rocket launchers and pointed them at the nearby Lebanese Army base at Rayak airport, the UN report said.

"It is widely believed in Lebanon, including by the government, that the strengthening of Fatah Intifada and PFLP-GC outposts could not have taken place without the tacit knowledge and support of the Syrian government," the report added.

Syria has denounced the claims as "lies" and insists that it is doing all it can to prevent the smuggling of arms into Lebanon.

Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, a veteran security official with Fatah Intifada, says his group's weapons "will never be used against the Lebanese."

The proud member of the pro-Syrian faction insists that the group was created "to die for the Palestinian cause, not fight in Lebanon." At his office in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, a poster proclaims the "martyrdom" of a fighter who blew himself up in Iraq in December 2003. It hangs next to pictures of Che Guevara and Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.

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