MIDDLE EAST : Lebanon’s Palestinian Unrest Mirrors Infighting in Gaza

When clashes broke out last month between Islamic militants and Palestinian police in the turbulent Gaza Strip, many feared the seeds of anarchy and--most feared of all--the outbreak of Palestinian civil war.

Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, moved quickly to quell the violence and establish a shaky cease-fire with the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas.

But days later, Palestinian fighting erupted in this southern Lebanese port city, home to Lebanon’s largest and most turbulent Palestinian refugee camp, Ein al Hilwa. It had disturbing echoes of the violence in Gaza and a message for those who believed that Arafat’s self-rule authority would bring peace to the Palestinians.

It has not.

The 60,000 Palestinians who call Ein al Hilwa’s narrow streets and cramped housing home have little stake in the Palestinian Authority miles away in Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho. Most have no hope of returning to their Palestinian villages in Israel and the territories.

Yet their factions closely mirror the Palestinian groups now struggling for supremacy in Gaza.

And the recent violence that broke out in Lebanon against Arafat’s Fatah loyalists and Islamic rebels opposed to the peace with Israel was a clear sign that Syria is prepared to exercise its muscle among Palestinians in Lebanon to score points in the peace process, many analysts say.

Syria, whose 40,000 troops in Lebanon make it the only real power broker in the small, war-ravaged nation, seemed to be sending a signal of its own when anti-Arafat rebels in Ein al Hilwa ordered Arafat’s Fatah loyalists out of the area once and for all, diplomatic sources said.

Although Syria has no troops in southern Lebanon, it is Damascus that calls the shots with the Lebanese army forces that surrounded Ein al Hilwa; it is Damascus that hosts the bulk of the Palestinian opposition to Arafat.

“This fighting had one very prominent signature: Hafez al Assad (the Syrian president),” said one Middle Eastern diplomat in Egypt. “He is a very smart man, and he demonstrated to everyone that he still holds the Palestinian card.”

The intra-Palestinian fighting in Lebanon coincided with a concerted media attack against Israel in Damascus this week as public despair over Syrian-Israeli peace talks heated up on the eve of an expected visit to the region by Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

“It goes without saying that the current Israeli position will never help the secretary of state to achieve anything that might mend the flaw that has afflicted the peace process or to scatter the climate of frustration that shrouds the process,” Al-Thawra, the Syrian government-run daily, said Thursday.

Ein al Hilwa has been the unhappy scene of intra-Palestinian fighting for years, most notably between pro-Arafat Fatah loyalists and the dissident, violent Abu Nidal faction. But serious trouble started brewing after the September, 1993, signing of the peace accord between Israel and the PLO. Mounir Makdah, Arafat’s erstwhile Fatah forces commander in Lebanon, then broke away--in opposition to the accord--and formed his own opposition force.

He has allied himself with the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah, and his political outlook closely mirrors that of Hamas in Gaza.

Thus, there was a sense of deja vu to the clashes in Ein al Hilwa, which pitted Fatah loyalists against dissidents led by Makdah. Muslim fundamentalists from Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other Syrian-backed dissidents sided with Makdah in the fighting, which left 10 dead and at least 25 others wounded.

Makdah, in an interview, said it is no wonder that Palestinians in Lebanon are disillusioned with the peace agreement Arafat signed with Israel. “There are 4 million Palestinians outside Palestine. Arafat’s signing left most of them without a solution,” he said.

Loyalty to Arafat persists, despite opposition to the peace treaty, he said, because of the $450,000 a month in aid the PLO dispatches to Ein al Hilwa. “Their stomachs support Arafat,” Makdah said of Fatah loyalists.

Times special correspondent Raschka was recently on assignment in Sidon, and staff writer Murphy reported from Cairo.