The Flag Report (Greece): The problem in Lebanon is only begining. The Turkish game in the region


Date: 09/08/2023 Time: 09:16

Pinhas Inbari μικρή By Pinhas Inbari

Last week, Palestinian factions under different names clashed in the Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp, which is the largest of Lebanon’s refugee camps, The order given to citizens of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to leave Lebanon indicates that the problem is only beginning, and is far from ending. Is what is happening at Ein Hilweh going to complete a development that is already in the middle of the destruction of the camps and the end of the right of return? It’s impossible to comprehend the happenings in Ein al-Hilweh without connecting it to Jenin, as the power system there and here is similar. What is the system in Jenin?

A pro-Iranian coalition led by Saleh Arouri includes Hamas’ pro-Iranian wing, Islamic Jihad, and a Fatah Tanzim group that broke away from the PA and is part of the pro-Iranian system of the Jenin camp. Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the Fatah wing of Jenin are facing this system, and they do not accept the connection between Camp Tanzim and Iran. The same is true in Ain al-Hilweh – The fighting erupted with the assassination in a planned ambush of Fatah’s commander in the camp right against the background of the Sulha conference of all PLO factions, except Islamic Jihad, in El Alamein in Egypt, and those who guessed that Islamic Jihad sought to sabotage the conference were not much mistaken, because we learn this from Jenin. Immediately after the IDF evacuated Jenin, the Palestinian Authority rushed and made a long series of arrests—all of them from Islamic Jihad, not Hamas. The PA preferred talking with Hamas for several reasons: first, divide and rule, and second, because it has a long tradition of talks with Hamas, and On the eve of the IDF operation in Jenin, Jibril Rajoub, a senior PA official, met with Saleh Arouri in Turkey. It doesn’t matter what they talked about, because The rules of the game are that under the guise of the usual topics, they talk about other things.

The same thing applied in Mahmoud Abbas’ meeting with Turkish President Erdogan, and Palestinian sources told me about this discussion that the main issue was Abu Mazen’s request that Turkey renews its initiative to establish a large industrial zone in Jenin. The area had already been inaugurated to great fanfare, but was shelved after President Sisi, who was an enemy of Erdogan, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood at the time, vetoed it, telling Abbas that it was either Egypt or Turkey. Now, with the thaw in relations between Egypt and Turkey, Abbas went to Egypt to persuade Sisi to agree to the plan. The intention is for Palestinian security to be deployed in Jenin not as an oppressive and collaborative force of Israel, but as a force that protects the national interest, such as a large industrial zone. It is not yet clear whether Egypt will agree now. In any case, the reconciliation conference of the PLO factions with Hamas failed, as no one had any illusions that it would succeed now after all past conferences had failed. Back to Lebanon. Jenin’s power structure is only a reflection of the power structure that is being built in the refugee camps in Lebanon, namely: the coalition of Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas’ Arouri wing, will remove Fatah and take over the Lebanese camps, and establish a link between Jenin and Lebanon. On the eve of the outbreak of fighting in the camp, senior PA security official Majed Faraj visited Lebanon.

It is unclear what he did there, but pro-Hezbollah commentators charged him with initiating the confrontation. I am not sure about that, but we cannot exclude the possibility that he brought to the attention of the Lebanese government the danger that the camps in Lebanon would set fire to the camps in the West Bank. The Arab media cited refugees fleeing the camp that they were already fed up with the PLO and all the organisations, and all they wanted was to live. The Mufti of Near Tyre said that the organizations infringed the right of return. Indeed, all the Syrian camps are already destroyed, in Lebanon the Nahr al-Bared camp, which was a pipeline for weapons to the Syrian rebels, has also been destroyed, and now Lebanon’s largest camp is in flames, and the refugees are dispersing.

If Hezbollah takes over the camps in Lebanon, who will want to realize the right of return to the Palestinian territories and Israel? Who needs Hezbollah in Nablus, or in Israel?

Pinhas Inbari is a veteran Arab affairs correspondent who formerly reported for Israel Radio and Al Hamishmar newspaper, and currently serves as an analyst for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

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