Palestinian civil war in the refugee camps of Lebanon

The Hamas-Fatah internicine war that divided the Palestinian government into a Gaza Hamas administration and a West Bank Fatah one is now playing itself out in the Palestinian refugee camps in other countries. Here is an example from Lebanon.

The clash erupted in the Miyeh Miyeh camp near the main southern coastal city of Sidon at about 1 am (2200 GMT Wednesday) and raged for about 90 minutes before calm was restored, a Palestinian source said.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's secular Fatah faction has been in open conflict with Hamas since the Islamist movement's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June.

The fighting broke out over a dispute between a Hamas militant and a Fatah rival over electricity supplies to a sector of the camp, the source said.

"It was an isolated incident that was rapidly brought under control," said Munir Maqdah, the Palestine Liberation Organisation's official in southern Lebanon.

"We don't want the events of Gaza to happen in the Lebanese camps."

Abu Mahmud, a Hamas official in Miyeh Miyeh, accused Fatah of "provocation" saying its supporters had ripped up posters of the late Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz Rantissi, who were both assassinated by Israel.

The two injured men, who suffered bullet wounds, were identifed as a Fatah militant and a Lebanese who lives next to the camp.

After the events at the Nahr al-Bared camp, the Lebanese are in no mood to continue hosting Palestinian refugees if the camps are going to break out into open civil war.

Let the shame be on the Muslim nations, not on Israel

Israeli citizens are taking action to prevent shame from coming down on the Israeli state over its treatment of refugees from Darfur.


An Israeli volunteer holds a Sudanese child in her arms during a demonstration at the Wohl Rose Grden in Jerusalem on Sunday. The sign reads 'Deportation=Death'.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski

One family who took in a Darfuri family Sunday morning said they felt it was their duty as Jews and Israelis to help asylum-seekers.

David, who asked not to use his real name for fear of putting both his family and the Darfuri family at risk, is on the board of the international Jewish volunteer movement Brit Olam.

"What is interesting to me about it is that private Israelis don't go around making declarations about what they want to do, they just go and do it," said David. "The government has made the declaration 'never again,' we heard it from [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert and other politicians on Holocaust Remembrance Day. But those declarations have not yet yielded action."

After reading about the refugees in the press, David and his daughter visited a group camped outside the Wohl Rose Garden. After a discussion with his family, they decided to offer a family two rooms in their house.

"We are currently handling it on a day-to-day basis," said David. "I was talking to my daughter about some of the problems on the phone. I said, 'We are all pushing boundaries to do this.' And she told me, 'Yes, I guess that is what it means to do a mitzva sometimes.'"

Israel has legitimate security concerns about people infiltrating over its southern border. But as far as refugees from Darfur are concerned, let their mistreatment be the shame of the Muslim world, and let Israel be a light unto the world to show how compassion should be extended to the oppressed.

The beacon of hope for the Muslim masses: Israel

Israel has one more thing in common with the USA: illegal immigrants streaming across its southern border.

Egyptian border guards on Saturday arrested six Sudanese, one Somalian and one Eritrean as they were trying to illegally cross from Egypt into Israel, a police official said.

The Sudanese men, who were from the war-torn Darfur region, were attempting to enter Israel in an effort to seek political asylum there, the police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The Somalian and Eritrean men wanted to cross the border for job opportunities in Israel, the official said.

The eight men, who were all in their 20s, paid thousands of dollars to human traffickers in the central Sinai Peninsula to help them cross, the official said. After their arrests, the eight were taken to Cairo in order to deport them to their home countries, according to the official.

This, more than anything else, is the shame of the Arab world. As wealthy as many Arab countries are, as much as they preach pan-Islamic brotherhood, the place that shines as a beacon of hope and freedom to the desperate Muslim masses is Israel.