Word: gaza
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...Beirut's Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Posters of Abbas - President of the Palestinian Authority, leader of Fatah and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) - would normally hang in offices and on street corners throughout Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps. But ever since Israel's incursion into Gaza earlier this year, Abbas has become politically radioactive to the approximately 400,000 refugees languishing in Lebanon, who were livid at his failure to act in defense of the beleaguered Gazans. "Abbas embarrassed us," says one Fatah official charged with delivering Abbas portraits in the camp. "Sometimes we force people...
...stack of unused posters is but a symptom of the collapse of support for Fatah in Lebanon, home to the most politically active population of Palestinians outside the West Bank and Gaza. It was the movement's traditional support there that underscored Abbas' mandate, as chairman of the PLO, to negotiate on behalf of all Palestinians. But the failure of Abbas' negotiation strategy to deliver any meaningful change for the prospects of Lebanon's Palestinian refugees has led many - like their kin in the West Bank and Gaza - to transfer their support to Hamas and other radical Islamist groups...
...while leaders of the two groups are holding reconciliation talks in Cairo this week with a view toward creating a unity government that can oversee the rebuilding of Gaza with international aid, in Lebanon the two sides are preparing for confrontation. Fatah officials accuse Hamas of secretly plotting a takeover of the camps in Lebanon in the same way that the movement took control of Gaza in 2007. Hamas officials say they have no military wing in Lebanon, but last month, a fight broke out in Shatila when Fatah men discovered Hamas moving weapons into the camp. In a different...
...would give Hamas a significant new strategic advantage. By agreement of the Arab League, Palestinian camps lie outside the jurisdiction of the Lebanese state, so control of the camps would allow Hamas to train and operate largely without interference from Israel or any Arab states. Moreover, unlike in the Gaza Strip, which is surrounded by an Israeli blockade, in Lebanon Hamas could easily receive weapons by sea, by land from Syria or with help from Hizballah. And a Hamas victory in Lebanon could be the beginning of the end of Fatah. "We already lost Jordan and Syria," says another Fatah...
...basics of hand-to-hand combat, firearms and Palestinian national ideology. "We teach what they don't learn at United Nations schools," says one local Palestinian official. On one recent day, some 50 schoolboy cadets gathered in Makdah's office after attending a demonstration against Israeli attacks on Gaza. He offered them a lesson they are unlikely to forget. "In the past, Jews used to kill us, and no one defended us," he explained. "Today, if the Jews kill us, we kill them." Later, Makdah - who was born in Lebanon and has been a fighter since...