Lebanon’s War of Camps Called ‘Mess’ for Syria

Although the fighting continues to swirl around three Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, it has already produced some unexpected results: The elusive Palestinian goal of unity seems closer than at any time in the last three years, and Syria seems to have alienated many of its close allies in the region.

“The fighting is turning into a real mess for the Syrians,” a Western diplomat here observed. “The reconciliation of the Palestinians is a major diplomatic blow to Damascus, and the failure to achieve a cease-fire in Lebanon makes it look as though Syria can’t keep order in its own back yard.”

According to news agency reports from Beirut, more than 400 people have been killed and about 1,000 wounded in a week of heavy fighting between Palestinian guerrillas and forces of the Shia Muslim militia known as Amal, whose primary benefactor is Syria.

Siege by Amal

The fighting began when Amal laid siege to the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh, near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. It spread to the area around the port city of Sidon, 25 miles south of Beirut, when Palestinian guerrillas seeking to relieve the pressure on Rashidiyeh stormed and captured the town of Maghdousheh, an Amal stronghold that overlooks the Ein el Hilwa refugee camp in Sidon.

Over the weekend, Amal fought back, attacking Palestinian camps in Beirut, particularly the Chatilla camp, with hundreds of fighters supported by tanks and artillery. Several efforts to impose a cease-fire have failed, despite missions to Syria--the dominant foreign power in Lebanon--by envoys from Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Algeria.

The so-called war of the camps has flared sporadically since July, 1985, over Amal’s demand that Palestinians in the refugee camps surrender their arms and turn over the responsibility for security to Amal.

Israeli Move Feared

Amal, which is considered the more moderate of the two main Shia Muslim group in Lebanon, has expressed concern that Israel would be sufficiently inflamed by the return of several thousand Palestinian guerrillas to southern Lebanon that it would invade the country again, causing further suffering in the predominantly Shia villages of the south. Amal has also insisted on maintaining control of the coastal highway running south from Beirut, which it argues is now threatened by Palestinian positions overlooking the route.

Palestinian spokesmen maintain that they do not seek a return to the so-called Palestinian state within a state that existed before June, 1982, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon and eventually drove most of the Palestinian fighters out of the country. Rather, they say, they want Amal to lift the siege of Rashidiyeh and permit the Palestinian camps to remain sufficiently armed to protect themselves.

Arafat on Christian TV

Alliances in the region have been turned on their head by the recent fighting. Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has appeared on a television station run by the right-wing Christian militia, a nemesis dating back to 1975, to denounce Syria. On six occasions, Israeli warplanes have attacked Palestinian positions near Sidon in open support of Amal--whose major supporter, Syria, is also Israel’s main Arab antagonist.

According to Palestinian sources here, the fighting at the camps has united the many Palestinian factions that have been at odds since 1983, when a revolt in Arafat’s Fatah guerrilla movement, with the help of Syria, split the PLO.

Sources here said the fighters in the camp have formed a joint PLO command made up of Arafat followers as well as groups based in Damascus that ostensibly are part of a Syrian-sponsored Palestine National Salvation Front.

“We are cooperating with everyone from Arafat to fighters from Abu Nidal to defeat Amal,” an official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said here. Abu Nidal is the code name for Sabri Banna, whose followers have been accused of carrying out terrorist raids such as the attacks on Rome and Vienna airports last year.

Prague, Moscow Meetings

Perhaps more significant for the long term, the fighting in the camps appears to have cleared the way for reconciliation talks between the PLO and a number of Damascus-based groups, including the PFLP and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, both of them Marxist groups.

The Popular Front’s leader, George Habash, has talked recently with Khalil Wazir, who is military commander of Arafat’s own Fatah faction, in Prague, in Moscow and, over the weekend, in Algeria, which has taken the lead in promoting a PLO reconciliation.

Aside from the fighting over the camps, the reconciliation has been made possible by the deterioration of relations between the PLO and King Hussein of Jordan, who last February broke off a yearlong Jordanian-PLO effort to get peace talks started with Israel.

The Popular Front has made reconciliation with Arafat conditional on the PLO’s cancellation of a Feb. 11, 1985, accord between Arafat and Hussein that spelled out the terms they envisaged for a peace settlement. In addition, the Popular Front has demanded that the PLO scale down its relations with Egypt because of the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel.

Wounding Its Prestige

For Syria, which has been publicly embarrassed lately by a torrent of accusations of involvement in terrorism and criticism for its support for non-Arab Iran in the war with Iraq, the camps war is another wound to its international prestige.

“Here you have the country which claims more than any other to be the defender of Palestinian rights now being condemned by Palestinians for presiding over their massacre,” a diplomat here said. “It really hurts.”

In the view of Western diplomats, the Palestinian question takes a back seat in the calculations that Syrian President Hafez Assad is making about the future of Lebanon. The Shias are Lebanon’s largest religious group, and Amal represents the ostensibly moderate Shia leaders who favor a comprehensive political settlement, while the more radical, Iranian-backed Hezbollah (Party of God) group favors the creation of an Islamic state in Lebanon, a proposal that is anathema to secular Syria.

A Contest of Wills

While the fighting in the camps now involves all the Palestinian groups, the battles are seen here as largely a contest of wills between Assad and Arafat, whom the Syrian president is said to despise. A defeat for Amal would not only be a setback for a Syrian ally but also a victory for Arafat’s efforts to reestablish himself in the territory adjacent to Israel.

The fighting has strained Syria’s relations with Libya, which has called for an end to the fighting; with Iran, which was deeply embarrassed by disclosures that it had received arms from Israel despite a public posture calling for the conquest of Jerusalem, and with Saudi Arabia, Syria’s primary financial backer.

The war has also caused friction with Syria’s Muslim allies in Lebanon, notably with Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who last week said he would join Amal’s side in the fighting. A longtime supporter of the Palestinians, Jumblatt is believed to have made the statement under extreme pressure from the Syrians, who called on the Druze to force the Palestinians out of their positions in the Shouf Mountains and to close their seaports to Palestinian arms shipments.

No Relish for the Role

Jumblatt--whose followers are members of an offshoot sect of Islam--is also expected to be asked to form a “buffer force” and police any cease-fire agreement between the Palestinians and Amal, a role he reportedly does not relish because he would prefer to see Amal’s power reduced rather than enhanced at his expense.

Syria’s options appear to be limited for the moment because Israel presumably would not look favorably on a Syrian military move in force from Beirut toward Sidon across the so-called red line that has separated Syrian and Israeli forces since they clashed in Lebanon in 1982.

One report suggested that Israel has quietly proposed to Syria that it would have no objections to a Syrian move against the Palestinians in Sidon provided that the Syrians deployed no surface-to-air missiles that could be used against Israeli aircraft.