Few noticed that this latest series of battles
was set off shortly after an official visit to Lebanon by Mahmoud
Abbas, the doddering old Palestinian president who long ago lost his
legal electoral mandate in the occupied West Bank but who remarked
before he left Beirut that Palestinians were dedicated to crushing
“terrorism”. Yet again, nobody took him very seriously. In fact, he was
in earnest. What he really came to Lebanon to arrange was an all-out
struggle by Fatah — the same Fatah which Abbas himself represents — and
other groups against a small but alarmingly active bunch of Islamist
Palestinians and Lebanese who had taken over the al-Tiri suburb of Ein
el-Helweh.

They are — or were — led by a man called
Bilal Badr, who in the past few hours appears to have settled in a
different area of the camp under the protection of Fatah el-Islam, whose
leader is another gang leader called Osama el-Shehabi. His Sunni Muslim
Fatah el-Islam (“Conquest of Islam”) was responsible for a series of
militant Islamic State (IS) group-like assaults on the Lebanese army in
the north of the country in 2007 — a number of soldiers had their
throats cut with knives — and its black and white flag has a hauntingly
similar design to that of the real IS. The fact that IS’s own flags do actually hang in
several of Ein el-Helwe’s streets — as they have briefly in the northern
Sunni Muslim city of Tripoli — only makes the situation more
disturbing. Many Palestinian suicide bombers have in the
past set off from Ein-el-Helweh for Iraq and have actually died
attacking the Americans there.

So what is actually going
on in Lebanon? Put simply, the country’s security services — infinitely
more efficient than you might suppose for a country smaller than Wales —
are able to handle Tripoli’s rogues keep a close eye on Sunni areas of
Beirut.

But Ein el-Helweh is supposed to be run by the
Palestinians who live there, which is why the Lebanese army recently
built a wall around the camp. Then Abbas turned up to promise that his
men would deal with the IS-type groups in the camp. The Lebanese would
handle their own IS supporters elsewhere. Unfortunately for Abbas,
however, his men did not catch Bilal Badr and the fighting ended in a
typical ceasefire; for fear of killing too many civilians, both sides
agreed to stop shooting while Badr moved to a new hovel elsewhere in Ein
el-Helweh.

If all this appears to be arcane stuff, it
is not. General Abbas Ibrahim’s general security service in Lebanon has
been steadily arresting “terrorists” in various parts of the north and,
more recently, in Beirut. There is good reason, for example, to believe
that not many weeks ago, they managed to arrest a man who was planning a
suicide bombing at Costa Café in Hamra Street (where your correspondent
occasionally takes a morning coffee). Along the Corniche outside my
home, groups of “tourist” police on bicycles and dressed in bright blue
shirts and short trousers pedal regularly through the crowds strolling
beside the Mediterranean.

Targets for suicide bombings

But
the cops have nothing to do with tourism; they are part of the state
security apparatus watching for IS. The same guys, in civilian clothes,
can be spotted at night in the downtown cinema complex in central
Beirut, the part of the capital rebuilt after the civil war by the
Solidere company. Not long ago, local papers reported that an employee
of Solidere had been arrested in January for giving IS — the real IS
this time — targets for suicide bombings. The story was wrong. Mustafa
Safadi did not work for Solidere. But he was discovered in a
still-unfinished apartment complex — also not owned by Solidere, but in
the downtown district — called Beirut Terraces. It’s not far from the
parliament buildings and it’s believed he was following the movements of
Lebanese politicians.

According to al-Akhbar, a Beirut
tabloid founded by a former journalist belonging to the prestigious An
Nahar newspaper, Safadi’s brother left Lebanon via Turkey for Syria,
where he took up directly with IS just after its capture of Mosul in
2014. And here the tale begins to darken. The brother tried to persuade
Safadi to follow him to Syria and join IS, and Safadi then travelled —
and here the reader will get the point of this distressing tale — from
Beirut to Ein el-Helweh camp to meet a Palestinian named as Mahmoud
Rahim who, like Safadi, is now under arrest. Safadi apparently asked
Rahim how to reach rebel-held Syria but decided to stay in Lebanon.

It
was Rahim, allegedly, who told Safadi to search for details of the
movements of parliamentary deputies. This is a serious matter since
former prime minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated close to the centre
of Beirut 12 years ago while travelling home from the parliament
building. A former “emir” of IS inside Ein el-Helweh, a man called Imad
Yassin, had actually recruited Safadi’s brother as well as a cousin who
was subsequently killed in Iraq. Yassin, according to al-Akhbar, was
also in contact with a Palestinian identified as Ziad Jahoush, another
IS member (also in custody) and Bahiedin Hojeir who was accused of
involvement in a suicide attack against the Iranian embassy in Beirut in
November of 2013.

Safadi has allegedly told Lebanese
investigators that he was asked if he himself wished to be a suicide
bomber and was told to contact Palestinians who could help him in this
grisly project. He was told to meet them in a house in Ein el-Helweh.
Safadi apparently turned up — only to find the house empty.

All
of which provides a fascinating insight into the sudden enthusiasm of
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to get his Fatah fighters into
battle against the Islamists of the camp outside Sidon. Alas for the old
boy, the Islamists remain largely untouched in Ein el-Helweh. All of
which means that the Lebanese security guys are watching the camp very
closely.

General Ibrahim, who has spent much time trying
to negotiate (with the help of Qatar) the freedom of several Lebanese
soldiers still held hostage by IS — again, we are talking about the real
IS — near the Lebanese-Syrian border, is no amateur. When he was head
of Lebanese army intelligence in southern Lebanon, he walked — alone and
unarmed — into the Ein el-Helweh camp at night to speak to Al Qaeda
fighters.

No job, I think, for Inspector Morse. But,
like all great detective stories, this one, I fear, will run and run.
Readers, as they say, will be kept informed.

By arrangement with The Independent

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2017