Palestinians refuse to surrender arms – No repetition of Sabra & Shatilla massacres
Annan needs to focus on disarming "Israeli" settlers
Source: AFP, 29-4-2005
Summary: SIDON: Representatives from the various Palestinian groups present in refugee camps throughout Lebanon are refusing to comply with a UN demand to surrender their weapons until Palestinians are granted civil and political rights from the Lebanese government.
Security Council Resolution 1559, which primarily called for a complete Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon - finalized Tuesday - also stipulated the disarming of "Lebanese and non-Lebanese militia."
But Palestinian factions here, including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), have rejected the UN resolution passed last September and refuse to give up their arms.
A leading member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Suheil Natour, said: "Our organizations are not militia. They are the components of a movement for national liberation."
In his first comments on the Palestinians` arms here since the resolution was passed, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a report on the implementation of Resolution 1559 released Tuesday that, "no change in the status of these groups has been noted."
But the resolution does not set a deadline for both Palestinian armed factions and Hizbullah, whose fighters are deployed along the border with "Israel", to hand in their weapons.
Natour said: "Palestinians possess only light weapons that are used to protect the camps," which are home to more than half the estimated 400,000 refugees living in Lebanon.
He added: "We will hand in our weapons only if the authorities decide to round up individual arms in Lebanon."
Palestinians also insist they handed in their heavy weapons at the end of the 1975-90 civil war, during the early phases of which the PLO presence in the country was a major factor.
Head of the PLO`s political department Farouk Qaddoumi said: "The heavy weapons of the camps were handed over in 1991 to the Lebanese government, which never honored its commitment to grant civil rights to the refugees."
According to Kamal Medhat, whom the late President Yasser Arafat charged with handing the group`s heavy weapons over to the Lebanese Army in 1991, "the Lebanese government promised in return, without keeping its word, to reopen the PLO`s office in Beirut, which has been shut since the "Israeli" invasion in 1982."
He added the government also agreed to host an official PLO spokesperson in Beirut, "like in other Arab capitals." The PLO`s armed groups, mainly Arafat`s Fatah movement, dominate Southern Lebanon`s refugee camps, where most Palestinians in the country are concentrated.
In an interview with The Daily Star from the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp on Thursday, Fatah`s general supervisor in Lebanon, Colonel Mounir Maqdah, slammed Resolution 1559 for aiming to undermine the Palestinian cause and displace the Palestinians.
He said the UN should pressure "Israel" into implementing several other resolutions pertaining to the Jewish state`s occupation of Palestine, such as 194 and 242, before speaking of 1559.
Maqdah further said the issue of Palestinian arms should be settled between Palestinian and Lebanese authorities.
He added: "We are ready to initiate a calm and positive dialogue to satisfy the interests of both parties."
But, he said: "We are driven by a cause. We are guests in this country until our return to Palestine."
According to the Fatah official, Annan should focus on the disarmament of "Israeli" settlers, halting "Israeli" occupation of Arab territories, the dismantling of settlements and the release of Palestinian detainees in "Israeli" prisons.
He said: "Annan should tackle the file from a human angle," reiterating the party`s stance "the U.S. can dictate its resolutions on states, but cannot implement them on the peoples."
But, Fatah head in Lebanon Sultan Abu al-Aynain said: "Our weapons are a guarantee against a repetition of the massacres of Sabra and Shatila," referring to the killing of thousands of Palestinian refugees by Christian Lebanese militia in Beirut during "Israel`s" invasion.
Natour and Medhat called for an "immediate and comprehensive dialogue" with the Beirut government to lift a ban on Palestinians from working in 70 professions and incorporate them in the social security system, as in Syria.
Assessing the current internal Palestinian dialogue, Mqadah said that he believed the results of a March conference in Cairo will soon be implemented.
He added: "There are ongoing meetings inside and outside Palestine between us and other Palestinian political forces, and we seek to form a political framework in Lebanon that includes all political forces so that they assume the responsibilities of the upcoming phase."
