Justice minister urges Salam to convene Cabinet The Daily Star/June. 20, 2015/BEIRUT: Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi Saturday called on Prime Minister Tammam Salam to convene a Cabinet session as soon as possible, and urged the creation of a national defense strategy to protect Lebanon’s borders.
“We address Prime Minister Salam, with utmost love and respect, and call on him to hold a Cabinet session as soon as possible,” Rifi said in a news conference from his house in the northern city of Tripoli. “We are confident that he (Salam) will make a historic decision and defend the state from the attempts to undermine it.”The Future Movement-affiliated minister said the “obstruction” of Cabinet by the Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah is “as dangerous of an adventure as Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian war.”He said the paralysis in Cabinet, coupled with presidential vacuum and absence of legislative action, would push Lebanon into “a state of clinical death.”Ministers affiliated with the FPM announced two weeks ago that they would not allow the Cabinet to pass any decision before the body appoints successors to the country’s retiring security officials.
The decision, which received Hezbollah’s backing, prompted Salam to cancel the Cabinet’s last two weekly sessions. In addition to a Cabinet session, a meeting of the Higher Defense Council should be held to discuss Lebanon’s preparation for the possible collapse of the Syrian regime, Rifi said, adding that Lebanon needed a “national [defense] plan” to deal with the potential fallout. The minister emphasized that Hezbollah’s withdrawal from Syria was necessary to guarantee Lebanon’s security, underlining that “only the Lebanese Army” should defend the borders. “I am confident that we have the military and security ability to prevent the spillover of such developments,” he added when asked about a possible influx of refugees and militants should Damascus fall to rebels.
Forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad have been talking about such a scenario for more than 10 days after rebels took over the Syrian army’s 52nd Brigade base in the southern Deraa province. It came three months after a coalition of anti-government forces took the northern city of Idlib, and seized the country’s last key border crossing with Jordan in the south. Rifi also dedicated a part of his news conference to comment on the death of a 5-year-old Palestinian boy who succumbed to his wounds Friday after being hit by a stray bullet fired during a Hezbollah funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs last week. The child, Mounzir Hazini, came from the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Syria. Rifi urged the victim’s parents to be patient, blaming the “lousy spread of illegal weapons” for the incident, and announcing that he had ordered the judiciary to find and punish those behind the shooting.
Palestinian refugee camp clash kills 1 in north Lebanon
The Daily Star/ June 20, 2015/BEIRUT: A Palestinian from Syria was killed and another man wounded in an armed clash in the Beddawi refugee camp near the north Lebanon city of Tripoli overnight, the state-run National News Agency reported Friday. The man was identified as Abu Yasser, a refugee who came to Lebanon after fleeing the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk near Damascus. Other media reports confirmed his identity and said he belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command. The causes of the clash remained unknown, according to the NNA, and it was not clear whether it was a continuation of a fight that took place few hours earlier between two families in the camp. The earlier fight, which media reports said had left four people wounded, occurred between the Abu Foul and Iskandarani families over a construction-related dispute. A joint force of armed Palestinian factions in the camp has been trying to prevent tensions from spreading, the NNA added.
Clash raises fears in Ain al-Hilweh
Mohammed Zaatari/The Daily Star/June. 20, 2015
SIDON, Lebanon: The latest bloody clash in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp that left two people dead and 11 wounded has raised fears that the shantytown might be heading for a new round of violence by rival factions vying for influence in the camp. A number of Palestinian officials in the Ain al-Hilweh camp voiced fears Friday that Thursday’s five-hour fighting, pitting gunmen of the mainstream Fatah Movement against militants of Al-Qaeda-linked Jund al-Sham, might be a prelude to new security incidents in the deprived camp located on the outskirts of the southern city of Sidon.In a sign of simmering tension, a Fatah gunman Friday shot and wounded a Jund al-Sham member in Ain al-Hilweh. Ahmad Amer, a Palestinian militant belonging to Jund al-Sham, was transferred to Al-Nidaa al-Insani Hospital in the camp after being shot by Fatah member Mohammad Sayyed. Sayyed told The Daily Star that he thought Amer was going to retaliate for Thursday’s incident.“He was passing near our base and gave me a strange look so I thought he was here to kill me because he threatened to do so yesterday after I prevented him from bringing in a wounded Jund al-Sham fighter into the hospital,” he said, referring to the nearby Al-Quds hospital.
The shooting sparked concerns about a possible outbreak of fighting. However, the joint Palestinian security force tasked with maintaining order in the camp prevented any escalation in tensions and detained Sayyed for interrogation. Jund al-Sham, which is classified as a terrorist group by the Lebanese government, has clashed in the past with Fatah guerrillas in the camp, which is off limits to Lebanese security forces.
Fears of a new security flare-up have been enhanced by signs that the fighting was not an isolated incident and had been planned to involve some Fatah members in it.
Palestinian sources said Thursday’s fighting showed that the security situation in Ain al-Hilweh is fragile and vulnerable to any setback at any moment despite the efforts made by the joint security force in the camp. The sources pointed out that the Taytaba neighborhood, the scene of Thursday’s clashes, serves as the location of a number of armed factions, particularly Islamist militant groups which have moved from Tawari and al-Sika neighborhoods. The Maqdisi group, which is close to Islamist factions, including Jund al-Sham, has also set up base in the Taytaba neighborhood. Taytaba is also viewed as a stronghold of the Fatah group led by Abed Sultan who is close to Fatah leader Mahmoud Abdel Hamid Issa, codenamed “Lino.”
Palestinian sources said the fighting started Wednesday night following a series of mutual provocations between Fatah members Abed Sultan and Bilal Arqoub and the Maqdisi group which is headed by Palestinian Fadi al-Saleh. Members of the men’s families later got involved in the fighting, which quickly escalated into an armed clash between their militias and allies during which machine guns, hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades were used. The two men killed in the clashes were identified as Palestinians Mahmoud Osman, a militant who participated in the fighting, and civilian Mehdi Hasna.
In addition to destroying seven cars and starting fires in many houses, the fighting also damaged water and electricity networks in Taytaba and nearby neighborhoods. However, other sources in the camp said that the fighting was the result of a struggle of wings within the current Fatah command and infiltrations of some of its ranks. The one who fomented Thursday’s fighting wanted to show the current Fatah command as weak and to present himself as an alternative to this command in any forthcoming security development, the sources said.
Meanwhile, uneasy calm prevailed in Ain al-Hilweh Friday with businesses relatively returning to normal in the camp, except for neighborhoods that were the scene of Thursday’s clashes. The camp’s residents expressed their anger as they inspected the damage inflicted on their homes and properties during the fighting, while families living in the Taytaba neighborhood staged a demonstration to demand compensation for the damages. “I wished we stayed in Syria,” said Um Ahmad, a Syrian refugee whose house was consumed by the blazes. “We didn’t know that they kill each other here too.” Other women who participated in the protests said the militants did worse to their properties than the Israeli invaders in 1982. “We heard them calling for jihad yesterday. Whose jihad? There is Palestine, under Israeli occupation, let them go practice jihad there,” the devastated Um Nabil Dahsha said. “I say it out loud: Even the Zionists did not do what the militants did yesterday.” Loubna Hamadeh, a resident of Taytaba, told The Daily Star that the militants also ruined the electricity network, as an elderly woman climbed to fix the cables.
