In Lebanese Refugee Community, People See Hope in Hamas

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In Lebanese ******** Community, People See Hope in ******

Ein al-Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest community of ************ refugees and their descendants, has long been a downtrodden place, impoverished and racked by factional *********. Its residents usually have a grim view of their future.

But now, the mood here is nothing but exuberant.

Recruitment for ****** and its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, is way up across Lebanon’s 12 ************ ******** communities, according to ****** and Lebanese officials. They say that hundreds of new recruits have joined the militants’ ranks in recent months, exhilarated by ******’s ongoing war with *******.

On a rare visit to Ein al-Hilweh, journalists from The New York Times saw posters of the Qassam Brigades’ spokesman, Abu Ubaida, everywhere, his eyes peering out from a red and white checked scarf wrapped around his face like a balaclava, imploring residents to “****** on the path of ****.”

In ******’s stronghold, the Gaza Strip, where some 40,000 Palestinians have ***** in 10½ months of war, many people have soured on the group. But elsewhere, ******’s willingness to combat ******* has won new adherents.

“It’s true that our weapons cannot match our ******’s,” Ayman Shanaa, the ****** chief for this area of Lebanon, said in an interview. “But our people are resilient and they support the resistance. And are joining us.”

Young men milling in a street in Ein al-Hilweh said this was the first time they were hopeful, and they each knew dozens of family members or friends who had joined ****** since the war began in October. Such enlistment doesn’t affect the ****** in Gaza because getting into the territory is prohibitively hard, but it bolsters ****** in Lebanon. Recruits typically remain in the community, helping to manage local affairs, and sometimes approach Lebanon’s southern border to launch rockets into *******.

The young men were upbeat that ****** could win for Palestinians the ability to return to the only home they acknowledge, the land that is now *******. That such a return will occur, however unlikely it seems, has long been an article of ****** for ************ refugees.

In the late 1940s, in the wars surrounding the creation of *******, ******* forces expelled many ************ ******, and many others fled in anticipation of *********. ******* has not allowed them or their descendants to return or reclaim ownership of property.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians settled in ******** camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Over decades the camps became built-up towns — often still called camps — that are home now to millions.

In Lebanon, those Palestinians have been barred from gaining citizenship or holding a wide range of jobs.

One such community is Ein al-Hilweh, with

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crammed into barely half of a square mile, largely within the Sidon, a southern port city. There is no shortage of men here willing to sacrifice their lives to ****** *******, Mr. Shanaa said, but he refused to say how many had been recruited from the Sidon area.

He spoke at a ******-run community center where men sat drinking coffee and eating dates while they watched gory footage from the Gaza war. Pictures of the recently assassinated ****** political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, ******** in by children, adorned the walls.

On the streets, a new recruitment poster for the Qassam Brigades showed dozens of smiling young men and boys barely out of middle school superimposed onto Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a site revered by Muslims. ****** named its Oct. 7 ******* on ******* — which left about 1,200 people *****, kidnapped around 250 and sparked the ongoing war in Gaza — “Al Aqsa Flood.”

The poster offered a training workshop for the new “Al Aqsa generation,” declaring that Jerusalem is “for us.”

Some Palestinians claim Abu Ubaida, the Qassam spokesman, as their Che Guevara, the long-***** Marxist revolutionary who ******** a cultural touchstone. Inside Ein al-Hilweh, Abu Ubaida’s picture is nearly omnipresent, adorning scarves and key chains.

Hezbollah, a Shiite ******* militia, political party and social movement with strong ties to Iran, is the most powerful force in Lebanon, with especially deep roots in the south. But in ************ enclaves like Ein al-Hilweh, multiple ************ groups operate and have followings — some secular and others, including ******, hewing to a Sunni ******* ideology. ******, which is also backed by Iran, and Hezbollah are allied in their hostility to *******.

For years the Lebanese military has barred journalists from entering Ein al-Hilweh, where armed factions have repeatedly battled each other, and the Lebanese military, for control. Under a decades-old international agreement, the military generally stays out of the ************ enclaves, which operate quasi-independently within a nation where the weak central government can barely provide electricity, let alone security.

But journalists from The New York Times were able to enter the town, swept up in a crowd of mourners during a ******** procession for a ****** official, Samer al-Hajj, who was ******* this month by an ******** airstrike. The ******** military called him a senior militant responsible for launching attacks from Lebanon into *******; ****** confirmed that he worked for the group but refused to say what position he held.

Mourners carried the coffin from a nearby morgue through an entrance to Ein al-Hilweh, where a banner proclaimed, “Al-Aqsa Flood Battle, the Battle of Glory and Victory.”

The crowd chanted, “Our blood and our souls we will sacrifice to you, martyr!”

Men fired automatic weapons into the air. “No *********! Save it for the Israelis!” a woman yelled at them.

The procession snaked its way into the labyrinth of buildings and alleyways so narrow they could barely fit a fruit cart, to Mr. al-Hajj’s home, where his widow and two children awaited his body.

Khaireyah Kayed Younes, 82, said she knew that Mr. al-Hajj, a close friend of her son, was with ******, but she did not know he was an important figure until ******* targeted him. She said he was known for his gentle demeanor — he often played with local children — and willingness to lend a hand to neighbors in need.

“This man is from our people, our neighborhood, our camp and what used to be our country, Palestine. We cry for his loss,” she said.

“If one of us *****, 100 will rise up; we won’t stop,” she added, her voice rising to a shout as she wiped tears from her wrinkled cheeks. “We are steadfast!”

Outside Mr. al-Hajj’s home, a woman, Feryal Abbas, led the crowd in chants addressed to Yahya Sinwar, an architect of the Oct. 7 ******* on *******, who succeeded Mr. Haniyeh as ******’s overall political leader.

“Sinwar don’t worry, we have men willing to give their blood!” she yelled.

Though ******** officials have neither confirmed nor denied that their forces ******* Mr. Haniyeh, as is widely believed, they have said they aim to ***** Mr. Sinwar. But whether ******** movements like ****** can be weakened or destroyed through campaigns to ************ their top leaders has long been a matter of debate among experts who study insurgencies.

They say the strategy of meeting ********* with *********, instead of addressing underlying grievances, risks radicalizing more people.

The secular groups that long dominated the ************ movement have fallen out of favor. Two decades after his ******, photos of Yasir Arafat, the once wildly popular head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, were noticeably scarce and faded throughout Ein al-Hilweh. Photos of his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the ************ Authority, were even scarcer.

Conflict between the ************ Authority and militant groups like ****** has spilled over into violent clashes in Gaza, the West Bank and ******** communities, undermining the ability of Palestinians to confront ******* politically.

“The fact that there isn’t a central address in Palestine to negotiate for peace has weakened the ************ cause and destabilized the region,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a research organization in Washington.

Any deal Mr. Abbas makes with ******* can be disrupted by ******, he said, adding: “Not one group has the monopoly to negotiate peace or wage war among the Palestinians. And that has weakened them and will continue to weaken them in the future.”

But since October, within Ein al-Hilweh, the groups have stopped pointing fingers at each other — for now.

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#Lebanese #******** #Community #People #Hope #******

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