Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2000, pages 11, 12

Special Report

Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon: “The Walls of History Are Closing In”

By Laura Drake

In recent weeks the political-military situation on the ground in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon has become extremely volatile and will likely become even more so in the coming months. The move by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization within the PLO to re-assert itself in the Lebanon camps in preparation for the final status mediations is intersecting the same timeline as Israel’s preparations for withdrawing its forces from southern Lebanon and the imminent revival of the Syrian-Israeli talks on the future of the Golan.

The reassertion of the Fatah presence into the impending security vacuum in the south is making the Lebanese authorities very nervous, as it is taking place within the no-man’s-land between the traditional Israeli and Syrian spheres of influence in Lebanon.

The Deteriorating Security Situation in the Camps

The triggering events behind the current increase in tensions were the re-entry of pro-Arafat Fatah forces into the Ein al-Hilweh camp near Saida over the past few months, their conducting of military training for new and old Fatah recruits in areas near Ein al-Hilweh, and a death sentence passed in absentia by the Lebanese government against Brig. Gen. Sultan Abu al-Eynein. General Sultan, from the Rashidiyeh camp near Sur (Tyre) in the far south—the top-ranking PLO commander in Lebanon—was charged by the Lebanese authorities in October with leading an armed militia (Arafat’s Fatah) that was potentially threatening to the security of the state.

The death sentence was immediately followed up with the arrest and interrogation of two of Sultan’s top deputies, Khaled Aref and Khaled El-Shayeb, at the entrance to Rashidiyeh camp on their way to a meeting with Sultan, and the creation of virtual siege conditions in and around certain Palestinian camps in Lebanon. These events resulted in an unfortunate exchange of words between the Palestinian Authority and the Lebanese state. The Canadians have offered their good offices in an attempt to mediate and reduce tension. This followed an unsuccessful attempt last month by the PLO foreign minister, Farouq El-Qaddoumi (Abu Lutuf), to defuse tensions more directly. Yet the reality remains that the interests of the PLO and the Lebanese state are concurrent. Neither party wants the Palestinian refugees to be nationalized in Lebanon, and both parties are steadfastly upholding the right of the refugees to return.

The interests of the PLO and the Lebanese state are concurrent.

Immediately prior to these events the Palestinian camps in the south were racked by a series of assassinations and assassination attempts against both pro- and anti-Oslo Fatah commanders in Lebanon. This past May, a pro-Arafat officer, Amin El-Kayed, was machine-gunned to death, together with his wife, while they were driving in their car. Days later another Fatah officer, Jamal Abu-Deeb, had his legs blown off by a remote-control explosive device placed in his car in his garage at home, in Saida city. And there have been two attempts this year alone on the life of Col. Munir al-Maqdah, the anti-Oslo Fatah military commander in Ein al-Hilweh. No one has claimed responsibility for any of these attempts. The identities of the assailants remain unknown, though some traces of connection to Israeli intelligence services and their collaborators were uncovered in at least one interrogation of a captured would-be assassin, Ahmad Awali, against Colonel Maqdah.

The fact is that the walls of history began closing in on the Palestinians in Lebanon with the election of Ehud Barak in Israel. The possibility of an Israeli agreement with Syria on the Golan, thought to have died with Rabin, was thus restored, with the attendant uncertainty this has created for all anti-Israel groups operating in Lebanon. And now Lebanon is saying with increasing fervor in recent weeks that there can be no final peace on their track without a solution that settles the Palestinian refugees outside Lebanese territory. The Lebanese government’s recent moves against the Fatah political and military presence in the Lebanon camps only underlines Lebanese adamance in this regard.

Transfer and Dispersion Scenarios

Because Lebanon is unwilling to host Palestinian refugees permanently, even in a de facto manner, they have been the subjects of various transfer and dispersal schemes.

All of the scenarios, mostly originating in Israel and the U.S., involve proposals to send the Palestinians out of Lebanon to any place on the globe other than Palestine. All of the proposals are unofficial. Nevertheless, they continue to hover over the refugee camps as a dark shadow, relentlessly paralleling the official talks concerning the refugee issue.

The most notorious of these is the Iraq scenario, which dates back to late-1993. It involves the removal of the entire Palestinian refugee population from Lebanon and permanently resettling that population in remote areas of Iraq, in return for steps to lift or ease the embargo against Iraq. Also required would be Iraq’s complete participation in the Middle East peace process, including participation in the multilateral negotiations and the signing of a peace agreement with Israel.

These proposals have been consistently refused by Iraq as contradictory to its unswerving historic commitment to the Palestinian people and as contrary to its own national interests. The Iraqis also understand that the promises to Iraq related to the embargo are neither substantive nor real.

Another of the transfer schemes is the southern Gulf scenario, which started as a rumor but which the author was later able to confirm with some of the participants. Uncovered in 1997, it involved Chairman Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) of the House International Relations Committee, one of the Israeli Likud party’s strongest supporters in Congress, sending a staff delegation to the six GCC countries requesting, in the context of security discussions, that each of them agree to receive 30,000 Palestinian refugees from Lebanon. The delegation was led by Deborah Bohdlander, Gilman’s top pro-Israeli staffer. Fortunately, all of the target countries have thus far rejected these proposals.

Other back-channel scenarios have involved a very recent endeavor to have the Palestinians of Lebanon sent to the camp known as al-Azraq in southern Jordan near the Saudi border, a proposal which is still very much alive.

In addition to these semi-official underground proposals, there also has been a series of scenarios and suggestions involving assorted combinations of various Arab and Western countries as potential future homes for Palestinian refugees from Lebanon. Some of these (e.g., the Refugees into Citizens proposal forwarded by Donna Arzt) come complete with target numbers of people to be sent to each destination, including Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and various Western countries, with token numbers remaining in Lebanon and a roughly equal number returning inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders (Israel proper).

A Peace of the Few at the Expense of the Many

Such futures collectively represent what the Palestinians in Lebanon consider to be their ultimate nightmare scenario. Formulated in total disregard of the wishes of the people involved, they also run against the express wishes and interests of the PLO/PA and the potential recipient countries such as Iraq and the GCC states. Lebanon has similarly disavowed the aforementioned schemes, instead formally upholding the national and inalienable right of these Palestinians to return home.

Such hostile plans for their future keep refugee leaders awake at night in Lebanon. More intense than anything else is their fear of being scattered, as they say in Arabic, le akhir al-dinya—“to the ends of the earth.”

On a very practical level, if the future of these people is presented to them as a fait accompli, or if any changes are made in their status without their consent, then the majority of the Palestinian people who constitute the exile populations will be outside the peace and will not consider themselves to be bound by its terms. It will turn Arafat’s dream of the “peace of the brave” into a peace that serves the few at the expense of the many. It won’t be real, and it won’t last.

It is strange that so many of the negotiators seem unwilling to acknowledge that Chairman (soon to be President) Arafat cannot and will never relinquish the right of return for Palestinian refugees. He cannot accept “solutions” that are reached behind the backs of the people whom he has represented in the political-military struggle of the past 25 years. Nor can the Israelis make him defer or evade the refugee issue and simultaneously expect him to declare an end to the conflict as Israel is seeking.

The bottom line is that without the informed consent of the refugee camp leaders in any decision relating to the fate or status of the populations they are leading on the ground, there will be—even with a final status agreement in hand—no final end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Dr. Laura Drake is a Middle East consultant specializing in the region’s political-military affairs. Presently she is also teaching international relations at the American University, in Washington, DC, dividing her time between Washington and the Middle East.