With only sporadic gunfire, Wednesday’s ceasefire between militants and the Lebanese army in the country’s north seems to have held long enough to allow most of Nahr al-Bared’s 40,000 Palestinian refugees to flee the camp, which has been a battleground for the al-Qaeda inspired Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army for nearly five days now.
The situation, however, is far from being resolved. Senior Lebanese politicians and military officials have vowed to wipe out the militant group which is estimated to have around 300 fighters left inside the camp.
Fatah al-Islam has proclaimed that it is willing to fight to “the last drop of blood” and has further warned that if the military does not cease its assault and allow them to remain in the camp, they will bring the battle to the rest of Lebanon. Despite claims by Fatah al-Islam that they are not responsible, many see the bombings of the last four nights in Ashrafieh, Verdun, and Aley as evidence that the group is not making idle threats.
The Lebanese government, however, has made it quite clear that the country will not be cowed by terrorism and threats, and direct affronts to Lebanon’s sovereignty will not go unpunished. "Preparations are seriously under way to end the matter," Defense Minister Elias Murr said Wednesday in an interview with Al-Arabiya television, "The army will not negotiate with a group of terrorists and criminals. Their fate is arrest, and if they resist the army, death."
The international community has expressed strong support for this decision not to compromise. European Union Minister for Foreign Affairs Javier Solana added his voice to many others on Tuesday, calling for Fatah al-Islam to lay down its arms and stop the bloodshed. And also on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated, “We are quite certain that with the resolve that [the Lebanese government is] showing, they're going to be able to handle the situation. What is going on in Lebanon is a reminder that these young democracies around the world are under threat from extremist forces that hate the fact that they're democracies.”
Late Thursday, the Pentagon announced it would be sending military aid to Lebanon to help put down the uprising, after earlier reports that the United States was considering sending up to $280 million in military assistance. About $220 million would go to the Lebanese army and another $60 million to police and Internal Security Forces, said Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman. This aid will be in addition to an unspecified amount of military assistance that Amr Moussa has promised Lebanon on behalf of other Arab states.
Though there is little doubt that the Lebanese army will prevail over the insurgency in the North, exactly how long it will take and the price it will have to pay in doing so remain unclear. A lull in the fighting over the past 24 hours has given the world a glimpse into what life has been like in the camp for the past four days, underscoring the humanitarian crisis that faces some 20,000 thousand refugees who have fled the camp and the many who still remain inside, held as human shields by Fatah al-Islam fighters.
It is a misconception to think that, because more than half of the camp’s residents have escaped, humanitarian issues have been neutralized and the army should get the green light to raze Nahr al-Bared. Thousands of innocent Palestinians are still left inside the camp, hunkered down in their homes and afraid to flee into a rain of fire from Fatah al-Islam snipers unwilling to let their hostages go.
“The situation is very miserable," lamented one escapee as he reached an army post, according to wire reports. "There are many, many people dead under the rubble. We have no water, no food, no electricity."
The Lebanese army has lost over 30 of its own, and has allegedly killed about twice that many enemy combatants. There is, however, no good estimate of the number of civilians who have been killed inside the camp. In addition to its own casualties, the army is reported to have recovered at least 20 civilian bodies from the rubble of the camp, but the reports from those fleeing Nahr al-Bared suggest that the final count may be significantly higher. Many escapees report having worked their way past bodies – civilian and militant – while fleeing the camp over the past 24 hours.
92-year-old Nahr al-Bared resident Ahmed Kanaan told reporters after he escaped the camp with his 37-year-old daughter, “We are treated like dogs. They step on us and continue walking. I would have been better off had Palestine died altogether.”
Kanaan, who fled from his home in Nazareth to Lebanon 60 years ago, was making a point that many have missed. As Palestinian refugees are driven away from the camp by violence while their homes are destroyed by mortar blasts and machine gun fire, they have been twice made refugees.
Kanaan and most of those who fled Nahr al-Bared will go to nearby Beddawi, another of Lebanon’s 12 official Palestinian refugee camps located about 10 miles away, where the UN and the Red Cross have delivered relief supplies. Crammed into temporary shelters for the displaced, they will remain refugees not only of their homeland in Palestine, but their homes in Lebanon as well.
"We will work to root out and strike at terrorism, but we will embrace and protect our brothers in the camps," declared Siniora in a televised speech on Thursday, in reference to the nearly 400,000 Palestinian refugees who reside in Lebanon. Siniora said Fatah al-Islam is "a terrorist organization that claims to be Islamic and to defend Palestine" but is really "attempting to ride on the suffering and the struggle of the Palestinian people.”
Siniora has not commented directly on whether he will ask the army to enter the camp. But unless Fatah al-Islam surrenders in the immediate future, it looks as though the army and government will be left with little choice.
According to a 1969 agreement brokered between Lebanon and the Palestinians in Cairo, the army is not allowed to enter any of Lebanon’s 12 official Palestinian refugee camps. Nevertheless, PLO spokesperson Abbas Zaki said on Wednesday that it was up to the Lebanese army to decide whether to storm Nahr al-Bared. "This is a Lebanese decision," said Zaki, "We have declared that the country is for Lebanon and sovereignty is for Lebanon, and whatever Lebanon decides or considers in its best interest, we support it.”
However, demonstrations in other Palestinian camps across county – most notably in Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest camp – suggest that not all of Lebanon’s Palestinian community agrees with Zaki. If the Lebanese army does enter the camp, many Palestinians are afraid that this will set a dangerous precedent that might lead to new conflicts across the country as the Lebanese government attempts to assert its control over other armed factions in the camps.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister has been left with a difficult choice: he can ask the army to enter the camp now and probably face heavy LAF casualties, going door to door and fighting Fatah al-Islam gorillas in tight alleyways; or instruct them to shell the camp from the (relative) safety of army positions outside and face a higher risk of major civilian casualties.
Deputy Secretary General of Hezbollah Sheikh Na’im Qassim, speaking yesterday afternoon at a rally in Beirut to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon, criticized the government for not containing the violence and resolving the crisis sooner. Certainly, it seems counterintuitive for Hezbollah – another armed non-government force in Lebanon – to speak out against Lebanon’s real army. However, when it comes down to it, the government does need to make a decision fast and prove to the country and the world that it is prepared to deal decisively with internal and external security threats, with minimal civilian losses.