A member of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ delegation to Beirut told AFP on Tuesday that he will discuss the issue of weapons in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps during a three-day visit to the country this week.
“The issue of Palestinian weapons in the camps will be one of the topics on the agenda for discussion between President Abbas, the Lebanese President and the Lebanese government,” said Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee accompanying Abbas during the visit, which begins Wednesday.
The visit comes after Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said late last month that authorities were working to “withdraw (unauthorized) heavy and medium weapons from all Lebanese territory,” and that he would raise disarmament of the camps with Abbas.
A Lebanese government official, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to brief the media, said earlier this month that Abbas and Lebanese leaders would discuss “extending state authority to all Lebanese territory, including the Palestinian camps.”
Majdalani said, “What matters to us in this new regional context is that we do not become part of Lebanon’s internal conflicts, and that the Palestinian cause is not exploited to serve any party.”
By long-standing convention, Lebanon’s army stays out of the Palestinian camps — where Abbas’ Fatah movement, the Hamas terror group, and other armed groups are present — and leaves the factions to handle security.
Hamas has claimed multiple attacks on Israel from Lebanon during more than a year of hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah terror group, which erupted when the Iran-backed terror group began attacking northern Israel a day after the Hamas-led invasion and massacre in the south on October 7, 2023.
The fighting on the northern border was brought to a halt by a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon in late November 2024.
In addition to confiscating Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure in the wake of the ceasefire, the Lebanese army was reported earlier this month to have seized 800 rockets from the Al-Beddawi Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
Earlier this year, the army also detained a number of Palestinians who were involved in firing rockets in two separate attacks toward Israel in late March.
According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, 500,000 Palestinians are registered as refugees in Lebanon, most of them descendants of those who fled their land during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
Due to their refugee status, most are unable to work legally in Lebanon, an issue Majdalani said Abbas would also address during the meeting.