Amidst the response to Israel’s assassination of Hamas chief Ahmad Yasin on March 22, an attempted attack on Israel by a Palestinian group from Lebanon challenged Hizbullah’s military monopoly along the border.
The Israel Defense Forces claims to have prevented a planned attack by a Palestinian cell; reports in the Arab media imply that the Katyusha missiles had already been fired. Most accounts point to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) as the responsible party.
The incident is curious because Hizbullah, an organization with elected officials in Lebanon’s parliament as well as a terror wing, has been the sole group to act militarily along the border since Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.
The PFLP-GC in Lebanon was contacted following Tuesday’s attack, advising them that they had infringed on Hizbullah’s jurisdiction; the Lebanese are responsible for “resistance” against Israel, they were told, not Palestinians, according to reports. Officials reportedly are working to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Non-Hizbullah politicians also see the attack as worrisome because it can aggravate Lebanon’s conflict with Israel and re-ignite tensions within Lebanon, between Lebanese and the country’s 400,000-strong Palestinian population, according to local media.
Tuesday’s attack will not cause any conflict within Lebanon, according to Ghassan El-Ezzi, a professor of political science at the Lebanese University in Beirut.
“The chaos of the 70s and 80s did not do anything for Lebanon except cause the Israeli invasion in 1982,” El-Ezzi said. He then implied that the Hizbullah’s unified resistance is responsible for Israel’s withdrawal in 2000.
Hizbullah’s main battle cry against the Jewish state is its alleged occupation of the Shib’a Farms, a small, uninhabited region. Though it was annexed by Israel with the Golan Heights from Syria, Lebanon claims it is Lebanese. Israel claims it fully withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 – an argument supported by the United Nations.
The PFLP-GC is a break-off movement from the PFLP. The PFLP was founded in 1967 as a Marxist movement for the liberation of “all of Palestine,” (including pre-1967 Israel) an amalgamation of two groups, the Palestinian Liberation Front, founded by Ahmad Jibril, and George Habash’s PFLP. A year later, amid personality and political differences, Jibril broke away to form the PFLP-GC. The organization has maintained close ties to Iran and Syria since then.
The PFLP is still active both in the Palestinian areas and overseas, however, it insists it has no links to the March 23 attack.
Because of the clandestine nature of the PFLP-GC’s operations, The Media Line has not yet succeeded in contacting any of its representatives in Lebanon or Syria.
El-Ezzi explained that PFLP-GC has a “presence” in Lebanon but its influence has diminished since the fall of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s. Judging from reports, it maintains several “camps” in Lebanon that are at least partially military in nature.
Hizbullah and the PFLP-GC have had an “on and off” relationship over the years, explained El-Ezzi, and reports attest to joint operations against Israel.
Following the assassination of Yasin on Monday, for example, Hizbullah shelled Israeli positions and announced that the attacks were being carried out by what it called the “Ahmad Yasin Brigades.”
The bottom line is that Hizbullah is part of Lebanon’s political system and the Palestinians are not, El-Ezzi continued.
“It’s not up to the Palestinians to fight for our cause,” he said. “They should fight to return back to their home, in accordance with the right of return.” He added that the Lebanese collectively fear a permanent “implantation” of Palestinians in their country and therefore want to limit their participation in society.
“Each to his own territory,” he explained
Because the incident was isolated, El-Ezzi said, there is no chance that Palestinian groups like the PFLP-GC will establish a military offensive against Israel along the Lebanese border.
“The attack will only give Ariel Sharon a pretext to launch more attacks on the occupied territories [Shib’a Farms],” he said.