Salafist Factions on Rise At Palestinian Camp in Lebanon

 

Salafist Factions on Rise At Palestinian Camp in Lebanon

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/ain-al-hilweh-looming-battle.html

 

 

[Women are seen through a broken window after clashes at Ain al-Hilweh

Palestinian refugee camp near the port city of Sidon in south Lebanon, March

12, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Ali Hashisho)]

Women are seen through a broken window after clashes at Ain al-Hilweh

Palestinian refugee camp near the port city of Sidon in south Lebanon, March

12, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Ali Hashisho)

 

By: Nasser Chararah for Al-Monitor Lebanon Pulse. Posted on March 13.

            إقرأ باللغة العربية

 

Bilal Badr, a Fatah official from the Fatah al-Islam movement (a takfiri,

fundamentalist and extremist organization linked to al-Qaeda) escaped an

assassination attempt yesterday [March 12] by a masked assailant in the

neighborhood of Ras al-Ahmar in the Lebanese Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp.

About This Article

Summary :

The historically contentious Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in

southern Lebanon has been shaken up by the the surge in the proliferation of

hard-line Islamism in the region, Nasser Chararah reports.

Original Title:

Palestinian Factions Set to Come to Blows at Ain al-Hilweh

Author: Nasser Chararah

Translated by: Sami-Joe Abboud

Categories : Originals Lebanon   Security

 

Fatah al-Islam, according to exclusive information received by Al-Monitor,

accuses Fatah of being responsible for the attack. Subsequently, sporadic

security problems have been taking place inside the camp, indicating that

the assassination attempt against Badr could spark an all-out military

confrontation that has been looming for months between hard-line Islamist

movements in the camp and Fatah.

 

But there is growing concern among the Lebanese security services that in

the case of such a confrontation, the fundamentalist groups may manage to

get a hold of the whole camp and expel the Fatah movement along with all of

its supporting factions.

 

About three weeks ago, these Islamist groups forced a Palestinian faction

allied with the Syrian regime ("al-Saeqa," the Palestinian military wing of

the Syrian Baath Party), to close its office in the camp, and housed

displaced Palestinians from Syria in it.

 

Toward the end of last month, these same groups threatened the Popular Front

for the Liberation of Palestine — which is allied with the Syrian regime —

that they would break into its offices in the camp if it does not vacate

them. The Front, however, said it was prepared for a confrontation.

 

A few days ago, unofficial contact was made between the Lebanese state and

leaders in Ramallah. This contact focused on the need to strengthen Fatah's

military and political presence in Ain al-Hilweh in order to establish a

balance between Palestinian moderates and the Islamist extremist groups

inside the camp. Fatah, however, is facing an organizational crisis in

Lebanon given the growing differences between the symbols of its leaders.

Despite the dozens of attempts it has made, the Ramallah leadership failed

to reach a settlement within the Fatah organization in Lebanon to end these

persistent differences.

 

In any case, a full military clash that could occur against the backdrop of

the repercussions of Badr's assassination attempt is likely to lead to the

fall of the entire camp at the hands of the expansive Islamist movement that

currently controls more than three-quarters of the camp.

 

Background of Badr's assassination attempt

 

Badr has been living in Ain al-Hilweh camp for years, deemed to be the most

important camp among all the Palestinian refugee camps inside and outside

Lebanon. It is conventionally called "the capital of Palestinian exile." The

importance of this camp does not lie in its size — barely 1 square km. — but

in the fact that it is home to the whole range  of Palestinian groups and

factions.

 

Under the Cairo Agreement, which was concluded between the Lebanese state

and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the late 1960s, the

Lebanese army shall not enter the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon,

including Ain al-Hilweh.

 

The al-Qaeda-affiliated groups took advantage of this, infiltrating the camp

over the past few years, and taking refuge there. These groups established

"guest houses" in the camp and "sheltered"  mujahedeen of all nationalities

on their way back or on their way to fight in hot zones around Yemen, then

in Iraq and now in Syria.

 

Since the beginning of the last decade, the Islamist influence in the

Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon has started to grow, especially in

those found in Nahr al-Bared in the north and Ain al-Hilweh in the south, at

the expense of Palestinian nationalist and other leftist factions.

 

Moreover, Islamist militant groups such as Osbat al-Ansar, the most numerous

and powerful group militarily, have emerged. This group is led by Abu Muhjin

(Tarek Saadi) who had gone to Iraq to fight against the U.S. occupation,

then followed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with his group, reportedly serving as his

deputy.

 

Later on, the group Fatah al-Islam emerged. This group declared in 2008 Nahr

al-Bared an Islamist emirate after it expelled all other Palestinian

factions. Chief among these was the Fatah-Arafat movement. This group, led

by Shaker al-Absi, a convert from the doctrine of the Fatah movement to the

Islamist jihadist Salafist ideology, had committed a massacre against

Lebanese soldiers. This led the Lebanese army to besiege the camp and expel

Absi and his group, which included volunteers from Asian and Arab

nationalities.

 

Later on, the principle emirs of Fatah al-Islam, including Badr, gradually

infiltrated the camp and took refuge in the environs of Osbat al-Ansar,

which harbored them and allocated an area in the camp for them under its

indirect protection. This area is located on the camp's periphery and called

al-Tawaree or al-Taameer neighborhood.

 

Osbat al-Ansar has not allowed Fatah to attack them. They have been known

over the past years as the Tawaree neighborhood groups, comprising three

main groups: Fatah al-Islam, Jund al-Sham and the Abdullah Azzaz battalions,

led by the same Emir who currently leads al-Qaeda in the Levant.

 

There are seven very prominent figures of these groups, and Badr, who

belongs to Fatah al-Islam, is one of them. While he is considered to be the

most dangerous one on the ground, according to Lebanese security,the rest

are  "from Fatah al-Islam."

 

These figures includes Mohammed al-Shuaibi, known as Abi Hasfa, Mohammed

al-Dokhi, an explosives expert accused of firing missiles at the United

Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and Ousama Shehabi, the emir of

the group. Other members are Mohammed al-Arifi, a member of the Abdullah

Azzam Brigades, and Majid Bin Mohammed al-Majid, who gave himself the

nickname of Abu Qatada al-Filistini, although he is a Saudi national. He is

the emir of al-Qaeda in the Levant and founder of the Abdullah Azzam

Brigades in the Levant. Recently, there was conflicting information as to

his whereabouts, some of which confirmed that he left the camp to go to

Syria, where he fights under the his group's banner. Another member is

Tawfiq Taha, who is affiliated with Jund al-Sham, but there is information

that he had joined Fatah al-Islam.

 

The dramatic development

 

Since the start of events in Syria, the proliferation of takfiri groups in

the Taware neighborhood has spread across the Ain al-Hilweh camp. There are

two reasons behind this proliferation. The first is the weakness of the

Fatah movement and Palestinian leftist factions in the camp, because of the

escalated hard-line Salafist Islamist atmosphere throughout the region. The

second reason pertains to the fact that Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria has become

attractive to Sunni Palestinian refugees in the camp, particularly since a

significant percentage of displaced Palestinians — who fled the Syrian army

bombing of the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria to the Ain al-Hilweh camp —

sympathize with Jabhat al-Nusra.

 

Under this new atmosphere linked to the consequences of the Syrian events,

another development emerged in March 2012 that has had a dramatic impact on

the power distribution map in favor of the takfiri groups and their Islamist

allies in the Taware neighborhood in the camp.  On that date, prominent

figures of this group decided to move from Ain al-Hilweh camp to Syria to

carry out jihad with Jabhat al-Nusra — which was established in 2011 — and

which was weak, numbering only a few hundred at the time. The engagement of

the Taware groups in jihad with Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria — among other

reasons —made Jabhat al-Nusra the most prominent group at the organizational

and military levels compared to its sister groups operating in Syria within

a matter of months.

 

Chief among those who went from the Taware neighborhood to Syria was Majid

al-Majid. His objective was to remove Abu Mohammed Joulani from the post of

emir of Jabhat al-Nusra and replace him. Yet, a large part of his

associates, as well as prominent figures from Jund al-Sham and Fatah

al-Islam in particular, turned against him in Syria. They joined Joulani,

and engaged in training and organizing his group, until it reached the stage

where it holds the strongest card in the opposition's internal military

balance.

 

This has promoted Jabhat al-Nusra and made the Taware neighborhood groups

attractive in Ain al-Hilweh. This doubled the number of members enlisted

from a few dozen to hundreds. Moreover, its proliferation is no longer

limited to the outskirts of the camp in the Taware and Tamire neighborhoods,

having extended to its interior. Its ties with Osbat al-Ansar are no longer

characterized by subordination; they have become partners in the Islamist

project in the camp in the face of Fatah and leftist Palestinian factions.

This project has become more powerful, after Hamas — which parted ways with

Hezbollah and the Syrian regime — joined it.

 

Lebanese intelligence reveals that there are close ties between the

so-called Taware groups and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. This relationship is

no longer limited to bringing support and the jihad of Jabhat al-Nusra.

Rather, a project to establish Jabhat al-Nusra in Lebanon was developed

weeks ago.

 

Under this project, the Taware groups — Fatah al-Islam, Jund al-Sham, some

wings of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades and other smaller groups — seek a

military and organizational unity within the project to establish a second,

Lebanese branch of Jabhat al-Nusra. Preceding this project, the three main

formations dissolved their organizational frameworks, and each of the five

prominent figures of al-Qaeda in the camp became head of a group that

consists of dozens.

 

The objective is to move from their previous organizational structure to a

new one under the name of Jabhat al-Nusra in Lebanon — a proxy of Jabhat

al-Nusra in Syria — awaiting the opportune political timing to announce

itself. These three groups function under the same project — along with

groups located in the Tripoli neighborhood of Bab al-Tebbaneh in northern

Lebanon, led by Emir Hussam Sabbagh. He is a hard-line Salafist,

characterized by the Lebanese army intelligence as the emir of al-Qaeda in

northern Lebanon.

 

Following the assassination attempt on Badr, the question is whether or not

Fatah decided to undermine the project — to create a Palestinian Jabhat

al-Nusra in Lebanon starting from Ain al-Hilweh — before it is completed and

if Jabhat al-Nusra in Lebanon will control the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon

as is the case of the Yarmouk camp in Syria at present. If these latest

developments transpire, this will only mean that Jabhat al-Nusra now

constitutes an important part of the Palestinian decision-making in exile.

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