Dangerous path
The violent confrontation between the Lebanese army and the militant Fatah Al-Islam group in the Nahr Al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon is a graphic representation of a pattern that gained momentum in the region, following the US-led occupation of Iraq. Nationalist resistance movements that were born to confront occupation have now taken on an added dimension of fundamentalist-style militancy, incorporating eclectic elements that may be foreign, by virtue of nationality, to the original movement itself. This phenomenon has been apparent in occupied Iraq and its spectre is now, dangerously, emerging on the Palestinian front.
Confrontations took place this week, not only between the Lebanese army and Fatah Al-Islam, but also between the army and another group dubbing itself Jund Al-Sham, that emerged in the Ain Al-Helwa Palestinian refugee camp in the south. The fuelling of political tensions continued with allegations made by Saad Al-Hariri that he could see "the hand of Syria" behind such developments, ostensibly serving to thwart the establishment of a tribunal to look into the assassination of his father, late Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri. It is said, however, that Al-Hariri himself flirted with Sunni fundamentalist militant groups in Lebanon. Against such a backdrop, the antagonism of the Sunni-based Fatah Al-Islam to the Shia Hizbullah seems also to play well into the divide between Hizbullah and Fouad Al-Siniora's government.
What is unequivocally clear is that Fatah Al-Islam, notwithstanding its Palestinian denomination, remains an offshoot alien to both Fatah and Hamas, and is acting independently of them. It is armed with substantial weaponry that has enabled it to engage in more than three weeks of confrontation with the Lebanese army. Press reports claim that the group includes several non-Palestinian elements, many from the Gulf region.
Within the Palestinian context, such a development is extremely detrimental, threatening to mutate the Palestinian cause into something that it is not, imbuing it with a sectarian-based fundamentalism that is not in its interest. The quintessential problem of the Palestinians must not be obscured, amidst the plethora of new groups and balances of power now emerging. The problem and cause remain that of a people dispossessed, rendered refugees outside their homeland and locked under the hammer of military occupation inside it. It would be disastrous if the half-century-old Palestinian struggle was linked to post-11 September style Al-Qaeda militancy.
The portrayal of Palestinian groups or actions as mercenary, sectarian and fundamentalist will play well into the hands of the US neo-cons, as well as extremist Zionist forces. Both have striven to obliterate the distinction between "terrorism" and the legitimate nationalist struggle of the Palestinians. The immediate victims of this situation will remain those who are most vulnerable: the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. It is they who are bearing the brunt of Lebanese politics and the inability of Palestinian leaders, Fatah and Hamas, to reconcile their differences in the name of the greater interest of the Palestinian people.
C a p t i o n :
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/848/ed.htm