Last month, after weeks of clashes in the Palestinian city of Ein el-Hilweh in Lebanon, the parties reached a ceasefire. The fighting, which left 31 dead and led thousands to flee, pitted the Fatah faction of the PLO—which is led by Mahmoud Abbas and governs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank—against Islamist groups. Nada Homsi explains:
The clashes began when a Fatah gunman attempted to assassinate a leader of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jund al-Sham group, according to security sources within the camp. The next day, Islamist militants killed the Fatah security commander Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi and four bodyguards. Fatah retaliated with force and attempted to expel militant groups from the camp.
By longstanding convention, the Lebanese state does not have jurisdiction over Palestinian refugee camps, leaving residents to handle security. In Ein el-Hilweh, radical Islamist groups like Jund al-Sham have exploited the lack of state oversight and loose internal security to establish their influence, which Fatah has been unable to subdue. According to Fatah and Hamas officials, the groups are made up of Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians, and are divided ideologically.
Hamas’s status as a relatively moderate Islamist party has allowed it to play a mediating role between hardline militants and Fatah. . . . But some in Fatah—including the senior official Azzam al-Ahmad, a member of the group’s central committee—have accused Hamas of playing a role in the fighting, which Hamas denies.
Meetings between Fatah and Hamas to discuss the clashes seem to have given Hamas a larger role in administering security in Ein el-Hilweh, which was traditionally primarily the job of Fatah’s National Security Forces.
Read more on The National: https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/lebanon/2023/09/21/ain-al-hilweh-fatah-hamas/