Militant group had rocky ties with Palestinian factions in Lebanon The Associated Press Published: June 8, 2007 International Herald Tribune BEIRUT, Lebanon: When Shaker Youssef al-Absi showed up at a Palestinian refugee camp last year and offered commandoes to fight the Israelis, fellow fighters received him with enthusiasm. They provided his 60 or so recruits with weapons and military training. Today, al-Absi and his men - whose numbers have swelled to a few hundred, many from other Arab countries - are pariahs in Palestinian camps, fighting a different war far away from the Israeli border against a different enemy: Lebanon's army.
About a year after their arrival, the deeply religious and reclusive men of al-Absi's Fatah Islam - an offshoot of the pro-Syrian Fatah Uprising - are now at the heart of a 20-day battle against the Lebanese army in the Nahr el-Bared camp in northern Lebanon. "Our movement welcomed them because of their desire to attack the Zionists (Israel)," said Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, an official of Fatah Uprising, which armed and trained al-Absi's men in Yanta and Halwa in eastern Lebanon close to the Syrian border. "But it seems they had other intentions, even before they joined us," said Abu Mohammed, a security chief in the Palestinian camp of Shatilla in Beirut, where al-Absi first set up shop with just 20 mostly Palestinian recruits, who arrived via Syria. Recent interviews with Fatah Uprising and other officials shed new light on Fatah Islam's actions in Lebanon, before the point when Lebanon's police and army attempted to crack down on the group, leading to the current standoff. They also shed new light on the complex interaction of Palestinian and other groups in Lebanon - all opposed to Israel but also differing in ideologies, and creating huge challenges for the government here. At the time that al-Absi first appeared in Lebanon, Palestinians in Lebanon were anticipating an Israeli attack on their camps after the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants in Gaza and other violence there, said Abu Mohammed and other Palestinians. So al-Absi's offer of fighting Israel in case of attack was received with open arms by Fatah Uprising and its deputy leader, Abu Khaled al-Amleh, who was based in Damascus. Fatah Uprising itself broke from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement in the early 1980s and has headquarters in Syria. Al-Absi had a militant background, and is wanted in Jordan for involvement in a 2004 assassination of a U.S. diplomat there. Soon after arriving in Lebanon, al-Absi spread out his growing recruits to other Palestinian camps - about 120 in Beirut's Bourj el-Barajneh, 60 in Beddawi in the north and 150 in Nahr el-Bared. Abu Mohammed and another Fatah Uprising official, Mahmoud Doulla, told The Associated Press that their leaders were so impressed with al-Absi's selfless dedication to the Palestinian cause that, at first, they ignored warning signs of other trouble. "We weren't of the same ideology," explained Abu Mohammed. "They followed a more puritan kind of Islam, you can say fanatic Islam. ... They were ready to kill disbelievers." Their politics also seemed contradictory to Fatah Uprising's. Abu Mohammed and Doulla said they were concerned when they noticed al-Absi and his men showed hostility toward Syria and its regime as well as toward Lebanon's Shiites and the militant Shiite group Hezbollah - all allies of Fatah Uprising. Lebanese government officials accuse Syria of backing Fatah Islam to stir up trouble in Lebanon, which Damascus long controlled until forced to leave in 2005. Damascus denies the claim, saying it considers the group a dangerous terrorist organization. When Fatah Uprising officials in Lebanon alerted their superiors in Damascus that al-Absi's men "were behaving strangely," they were swiftly dismissed and told the group was in Lebanon for the "struggle" and to fight the "Zionist enemy," said Abu Mohammed. He said at the start, only 20 Fatah Islam men were based in the Shatilla camp, but during last summer's Hezbollah war with Israel, their numbers had risen to about 100. He said al-Absi was snubbed by Hezbollah when he offered to fight alongside the Shiite group during the summer war. Beirut-based Palestinian expert Majed Azzam said the offer to fight alongside Hezbollah was made by all the Palestinian factions in Lebanon, and rejected. "Hezbollah told them thank you very much, but we'd rather do this on our own," Azzam said. Al-Absi subscribes to the Salafi and takfiri ideology of Islam that urges Sunni Muslims to kill anyone they consider an infidel, even Shiite Muslims. But Azzam said despite that, al-Absi has never spoken against the Shiite Hezbollah because it is fighting Israel. Al-Absi's relationship with Fatah Uprising showed its first public sign of cracks last Nov. 23, when Palestinian and Lebanese security forces raided an apartment occupied by his gunmen in the Beddawi camp in northern Lebanon. In the ensuing battles, a Palestinian security man was killed and two of al-Absi's militants were wounded and handed over to Lebanese security by the camp's Palestinian security. Al-Absi was angered that Fatah Uprising did not protect the men or protest their handover to Lebanese authorities. On Dec. 5, Fatah Uprising leader Saeed Moussa ordered al-Absi and his fighters to leave his group's bases in the Shatilla and Bourj el-Barajneh camps. Al-Absi withdrew to Beddawi. In a new ultimatum three days later, Abu Moussa gave al-Absi 24 hours to leave Beddawi. "Where am I going to take 400 men in 24 hours? Throw them in the sea?" Abu Mahmoud quoted al-Absi as telling a Fatah Uprising official. Other Palestinians confirmed the remark. The following day, al-Absi seized Fatah Uprising positions and weapons in Nahr el-Bared, where he had regrouped his fighters - and he announced the creation of Fatah Islam.
