Lebanon's New Fatah: “Revolution Within a Revolution”

By Laura Drake

As Yasser Arafat consolidates his new authority in Gaza and Jericho, an equal but opposite reaction is taking place across the border in Lebanon, Arafat's traditional stronghold. Here, in the Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp, famous for its fierce resistance to the Israeli invasion forces in 1982, a group proclaiming itself as the new Fatah has been born.

Nestled in the heart of this crowded city-camp of 100,000 stands the political headquarters of Col. Munir Maqdah, a former commander in Arafat's elite Force 17, turned Fatah opposition leader. Talking with Maqdah, known also by his nom de guerre, Abu Hassan, one cannot help but be reminded of images of Arafat from the years of the PLO heyday in Lebanon. Like Arafat, the colonel's military fatigues and sidearm are an integral part of his personal identity. He is deeply and outwardly religious, yet his politics are militant and distinctly secular. And, like Arafat, he is concerned about Israeli assassination squads. Maqdah never leaves home without his security entourage, even for short distances, while public appearances require several dozen fighters stationed on the rooftops, around the perimeter, and in every other conceivable place from which an armed assailant might approach.

In this area of southern Lebanon, the tense atmosphere resembles that of the mid-1980s. Camp residents live in fear of Israeli airplanes, which fly overhead at least once a day. People are heavily armed. Young boys just under the age of puberty are being trained as future guerrillas, the fighting force of what will be the fourth generation of Palestinian refugees. In short, the PLO-Israeli peace of the 1990s doesn't exist here. It simply isn't real to camp residents. To them, the Israelis are still the same enemy they were before. "It is only Arafat who has changed," said one fighter.

Indeed, as he spoke those words, news arrived at headquarters that Israeli warplanes had just begun a bombing attack in the south. The location: Palestinian and Hezbollah bases about 10 miles to the east of our position. One of Abu Hassan's colleagues, a local PFLP leader, turned tome and warned: "We might be next. They could come at any time."

Maqdah's new Fatah asserts to itself the organization's insignia, logo, motto and charter. It also claims some of Fatah's adherents in exile in Western countries, including the United States. The Forces of the Black September 13 Brigades—Fatah, as the group is known among Palestinians here—is, in political terms, what Arafat's Fatah might have become, without the 1993 Oslo agreement.

When asked to define his group's identity in five words or less, Maqdah replied that the Fatah Brigades aim to create in Fatah "a revolution within a revolution." He has opened merger talks with the Syrian-supported Fatah command of Abu Musa, which defected from Arafat in 1983.

Abu Hassan's political platform, just released, begins with a defiant challenge to Arafat's leadership: "The Fatah movement, representing the nationalist majority [of the Palestinian people], does not give its agreement to the Oslo accord, the accord of capitulation and surrender....The Fatah movement rejects this agreement, condemns it, and will resist its implementation." Just as Arafat's Fatah has come to be defined by the Gaza-and-Jericho-first agreement, so has Maqdah's. Just look at the name, commemorating the signing of the agreement the group rejects.

A Perception of Betrayal

The Black September 13 Brigades may indeed qualify as the most militant opponents of the Oslo accord, reflecting a contempt based on a perception of betrayal. Said one of the group's strategic analysts, who asked to remain anonymous: "There are over 50 examples of autonomy in the world, and not a single one of them has ever led to statehood. Arafat knows this. He himself said it many times in the past."

Said another aide: "He was our leader and confidante, but now he has emerged from our ranks with his own personal agenda. I think we never really knew him." Maqdah himself thinks of Arafat as "Palestine's Lahad," referring to Maj. Antoine Lahad, Israel's Christian Lebanese client in the occupied south, "entrusted to manage the next phase of occupation."

"We were an integral part of Arafat's forces right up until the signing," said an adviser, who served with Maqdah in Force 17. "But last September, he deserted our people outright and became part of the occupation. So now it falls to us to fulfill the legitimate aims of the Fatah movement." Perhaps not surprisingly, it was not the traditional opposition groups, the PFLP or DFLP, or even Abu Musa, that called for Arafat's execution during his visit to Gaza. It was Col. Munir Maqdah, broadcasting live on CNN.

The Fatah Brigades are deeply entrenched in the life of Ein al-Hilweh and its surrounding camps. Abu Hassan, who keeps his headquarters and residence in the heart of the camp, said: "Anyone who claims to be a leader must share in the daily life and problems of the people, or he will go off track, like Arafat," whom he portrayed as a distant and indifferent figure. "Arafat has neglected our people and our revolution. He has betrayed all our martyrs who fought beside him for so many years. He is out of touch with the dangers that our people are facing concerning their future here."

The colonel's approach to leadership is practical and down-to-earth. When Leba-non's prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, informed the destitute residents of Al-Awdah and Al-Uzu, two unregistered camps near Ein al-Hilweh, that they would have to leave their homes, such as they are, Maq- dah and his colleagues from the other factions held a town meeting for the residents of both camps. "The long-term strategy of the U.S. and the Zionist occupiers is to ease us out of Lebanon, one step at a time," Maqdah warned. "We need a unified strategy to resist its implementation." The result was a genuine brainstorming session between people and leaders.

The Brigades exist because of the perception that, in accepting the accords, Arafat abdicated his leadership responsibilities to the 1948 refugees, especially in Lebanon. Cut off from Tunis both politically and financially, they have looked to the Palestinian opposition alliance, based in Damascus and Beirut, for support, and they have sought out the cooperation of Lebanese groups also resisting Israeli occupation. Presently, all the major Palestinian factions, including the Fatah Brigades, are concerned with three issues: 1) coping with the poverty resulting from the loss of all major sources of funding; 2) preventing Israeli uprooting of their camps through the political process; and 3) presenting an active, real-time opposition to the Gaza-and-Jericho-first agreement.

It was predictable that the 1948 refugees would oppose the accord, since it treats their problem as a peripheral matter, when in fact it was the origin and remains the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict. "We have struggled all our lives to return to our country, and for us there is no other option," said one member of the Fatah Brigades. "Where else are we supposed to go? Palestine is our only homeland."

Col. Maqdah's new Fatah still is in its embryonic phase. As such, it poses no practical threat to Arafat's leadership at present. But Maqdah and his traditional opposition colleagues may represent an even more intractable problem for the Palestinian authority than the Hamas opponents living within Gaza and the West Bank. Even if conditions improve for those living inside the autonomy enclaves, when Arafat looks north to Lebanon, the center of the PLO's existence and struggle for so many years, and sees hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left in limbo, in a deep stateof worry regarding their ultimate fate, he must realize that something has gone terribly wrong.

And indeed it may have. Palestinians here believe that Arafat has sacrificed them forever on the altar of the Gaza-and-Jericho-first agreement. Absent are the tangible details of leadership: constant communication, coordination and reassurance, public and private advocacy of their issues, a share of the money being sought for Gaza and Jericho, and a strong insistence that their camps—indeed their very presence—in Lebanon not be placed in danger.

Many here wonder whether Arafat has fully internalized what it would mean for the PLO as an organization to lose a second major constituency (it already lost one on the inside to Hamas), especially one that occupies a position of such centrality in the minds of Palestinians everywhere. The Tunis-based PLO isn't just losing parties or factions, it is losing a population, one which was for almost two decades the standard-bearer of the Palestinian cause. Their reaction to Oslo, or to Arafat's participation in it, isn't a matter of ideology, or extremism, or factionalism, or rejectionism. It is rooted in the nature of the Oslo accord itself, which embraces certain sectors of the Palestinian nation and excludes others, thus cantonizing not only the land, but the people themselves.

Laura Drake, director of research at the Council for the National Interest, spent two days in Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp with the leadership of the Black September 13 Brigades and their allies.