Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbollah In Lebanon

 

In Lebanon, Hamas has been expanding its presence in the Palestinian refugee camps, where it is actively recruiting operatives, warehousing weapons, and setting up weapons production facilities. On December 10, it attacked fighters belonging to its Palestinian rival, Fatah. Meanwhile, Hezbollah looks uneasily at the growth of Hamas in its own backyard. A report on the relations between Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbollah is here: “‘Hamas does not see itself as a guest in Lebanon,’ defense expert say [sic],” by Yaakov Lappin, JNS.org, December 22, 2021:

The deadly explosion that tore through a Hamas arms depot on Dec. 10 in a mosque in the Burj Al Shimali refugee camp, in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, is a vivid reminder of Hamas’s growing organized armed presence on Lebanese territory – and Iran’s role in helping it grow.

The blast killed a Hamas engineer named Hamza Ibrahim Shahine, whose funeral turned into a gun battle between gunmen from Fatah and Hamas, leaving three [sic] people reportedly dead.

At the funeral for Shahine, Fatah gunmen suddenly appeared and shot to death not three but four Hamas operatives. Fatah and Hamas have been at each other’s throats since they battled for control of Gaza in 2007, After more than 100 Fatah men had been killed and 500 wounded, Hamas expelled the rest of the Fatah operatives from Gaza. Neither side has forgotten that bloody episode, nor the attacks by Fatah in the West Bank on Hamas fighters and supporters.

Two months before the blast, the mosque at Burj Al-Shimali was flagged as a central weapons manufacturing workshop in a detailed report by the Alma Research and Education Center, a security watchdog based in northern Israel.

The mosque in the Burj Al-Shimali camp is now clearly under the control of Hamas, for the terror group has been using it as both a workshop for manufacturing weapons and as a warehouse for storing its weapons. In the camp itself where Fatah once held uncontested sway, Hamas has been gaining recruits, and more support — money and weapons — from Iran..

Hamas’ growing armed presence is not only a serious challenge for Hezbollah, due to Hamas’s independent decision-making on when to fire rockets at Israel – it is also creating a challenge for Fatah in Lebanon, Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri, director of the research department at the Alma Center, said.

Hamas’ expansion into the Lebanese camps has rattled Fatah, which until recently had unchallenged control in the refugee camps in Lebanon. Hamas has seen its popularity increase because of its willingness to go to war, again, against Israel this past May. It did not go unnoticed by Palestinians in Lebanon and elsewhere that Fatah did not lift a finger to help Hamas during that conflict. And Hamas has managed to convince Palestinians that by “still standing” at the end of eleven days of fighting with Israel it had somehow – in Hamas’ self-serving calculation— been the actual victor.

“Hamas does not just see itself as a guest in Lebanon,” said Beeri, who served for 20 years in the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate.

It is a serious challenge for Hezbollah in Lebanon, because of its independent activities and force build-up, and it is also in a state of significant tension with Fatah, the central Palestinian movement in Lebanon,” he stated.

The growing popularity of Hamas, the expansion in the number of its recruits and in their activities in the Lebanese camps, is a source of continuing anxiety for Fatah, as it feels its grip over the Palestinians slipping.

All of this serves Iran well, giving the Islamic republic multiple proxies and allies that it can encourage to act against Israel from Lebanon, and giving it options when Hezbollah wishes to focus on domestic Lebanese crises and to dial down tensions with Israel.

Iran now has one more proxy/ally – Hamas – that it can count on to do its bidding, not only in Gaza (where Iranian money and weapons have been transferred to the group), but in Lebanon as well. Hezbollah may decide to concentrate on shoring up its position in Lebanon, which is now being challenged by many Lebanese who are still furious at Hezbollah’s responsibility for the gigantic blast at the Port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, and its continuing denial of that responsibility. The Christians, Sunni Arabs, and Druze, and even some Shi’a, are also alarmed by the state-within-a-state that Hezbollah has created in Lebanon, with support not only from its own members but from the terror group’s willing collaborators, including the Maronite President Michel Aoun. Should Hezbollah want to concentrate on its own position in Lebanon, and focus its efforts on helping to solve what has been described as “the worst financial crisis – anywhere — of the last 150 years,” it may want to decrease its attacks on the Jewish state, and avoid the reprisals that are inevitably visited upon Lebanon after such attacks. And should that happen, Iran now has another ally in Lebanon – Hamas – that it can count on to take Hezbollah’s place on those occasions when Hassan Nasrallah wants to focus solely on Lebanon’s domestic problems.

According to the documents we have, Hamas aspires to create precise rockets, guided by GPS, with a range of 20 kilometers at the first stage,” said Beeri. “This is a secret project.”

This program – no longer “secret” — uncovered by Mossad, according to which Hamas in Lebanon hopes to manufacture precision-guided rockets with a range of 20 km., shows the sinister scope of its ambition.

“Their goal is to be able to fire 200 rockets at Israel from Lebanon in two rounds of fighting, or 100 rockets per round,” said Beeri. “Until now, only Hezbollah had such capabilities. It is unheard of for another organization in Lebanon to deploy such firepower.”

Other plans include setting up 122-millimeter mortar shells that are launched automatically by a timer, meaning that even when Israel locates the source of fire, it won’t have a target left to hit after the mortar is launched.

If all of these Hamas plans come to fruition – especially those for manufacturing precision guided missiles — the terror group will possess weapons, and firepower, unmatched by Fatah, and that will rival in quality, but not in quantity, the store of rockets that in Lebanon only Hezbollah now possesses.

“Fatah, which is the dominant movement at the Burj Al-Shimali refugee camp, is certainly unhappy to see Hamas building weapons “under its nose,” Beeri assessed. “This is the basis for the funeral gunfight, which was likely the result of an organized decision rather than a local initiative,” he added. “Fatah suddenly sees a weapons storehouse explode, causing damage. This could be motivation for it to settle accounts with Hamas.”

The explosion of the carelessly-stored weapons by Hamas, underlining the danger the group posed for the residents of Burj al-Shimali, caused anger among its occupants against Hamas, and provided a welcome opportunity for Fatah to settle scores with Hamas operatives attending the funeral of one of their own.

In Lebanon, Hamas sees a new front that it can activate against Israel in addition to the Gaza Strip, giving it operational flexibility.

This force build-up program is occurring with the active support of the Palestinian Branch of the Iranian Quds Force, the overseas special operations unit that nourishes Iran’s proxies throughout the Middle East with weapons, training and funding, according to Beeri.

Iran’s Quds Force, that deals with Iranian proxies throughout the region, has provided support – money, weapons, training – to the Hamas forces in Gaza and now, in addition, it is providing the same support to Hamas operatives in Lebanon.

He named Hamas’s “Construction Bureau” – a headquarters operation responsible for Hamas’s force build-up in all sectors – as the body overseeing Hamas’s workshops in Lebanon.

“Most of the Construction Bureau’s people are in Turkey, but today, for security reasons, many of them moved to Lebanon,” said Beeri. This includes Hamas’s Deputy Political Bureau chief Saleh Al-Arouri, who is responsible for building West Bank terrorism cells.

“Within Lebanon, Hamas has two central operational units. All told, there are hundreds of Palestinian operatives in Hamas – Lebanon, active in multiple refugee camps,” Beeri said….

Hamas has gone in a few years from having practically no operatives in Lebanon to now having hundreds, and in “multiple refugee camps.”…

Hamas uses the money and weapons Iran supplies to it, to stage marches, displaying some of that weaponry; those displays help attract new recruits, including Palestinians who now leave Fatah because they deem it insufficiently willing to take on Israel the way Hamas did in Gaza in mid-May. The security cooperation between the P.A. security services (made up largely of Fatah operatives) and Israel also contributes to Fatah’s growing unpopularity, as does the mismanagement, corruption, and suppression of all dissent, by the regime of Mahmoud Abbas, which is kept in power by Fatah fighters.

Fatah now finds that, after having been expelled from Gaza in 2007 by Hamas after a brief and bloody rout, and in the West Bank constantly being challenged by Hamas operatives seeking to replace Fatah’s rule with their own, even in its last redoubt of Lebanon it may now be losing control. Hamas is steadily gaining strength, with ever more recruits, and more weapons manufactured in its workshops, or transferred from Iran, and more money, as well, received from the mullahs in Tehran.

Fatah is not waiting to be crushed by Hamas, as it was in Gaza in 2007. In Lebanon it has now struck first, by attacking a Hamas funeral procession and killing four of the mourners at the Al-Shimali refugee camp. There are still many Fatah supporters in the Lebanese camps, though their numbers are decreasing. Fatah knows this is a situation not susceptible to compromise; it’s a case of “victor” and “vanquished” as it was in Gaza in 2007, and it intends not to be vanquished yet again.

Hamas is rapidly spreading its tentacles in Lebanon, whose Palestinians were once wholly committed to Fatah, but not any longer.

This month’s blast, Beeri assessed, originated from a failure to carefully store the weapons. “A very likely scenario is a work accident stemming from improper storage,” he said.

“The idea that Hezbollah approves and knows about all of Hamas’s activity in Lebanon is, in my view, wrong. Hamas wants to compartmentalize its activities and keep Hezbollah out of the loop,” said Beeri.

Hamas has no intention of sharing information about its activities with Hezbollah, which it sees as a rival for Iran’s support, and recognizes that Hezbollah is not pleased with the terror group’s expansion in the Lebanese theatre.

When Hamas fired rockets at Israel in August, leading to Israeli retaliatory airstrikes, “Hezbollah was presented with fait accompli, and it was forced to be dragged into the escalation even though it did not want this,” he recalled. Hezbollah responded to the Israeli airstrikes by firing 19 rockets at Israel….

Hamas fired rockets at Israel without consulting Hezbollah; Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes included Hezbollah targets; Hezbollah then felt compelled to respond with rockets, followed again by Israeli airstrikes. It was not an exchange that Hezbollah wanted at this time, but one that Hamas had brought upon it by its own aggression.

The Israeli analyst Maj. Tal Beeri of the Alma Center advises the IDF to respond to an attack by Hamas, whether from Gaza or Lebanon, by striking, as it sees fit, targets in either territory. It can strike Lebanon even If an attack originated in Gaza, and vice versa. Americans call this obvious tactic “keep ‘em guessing.” Beeri predicts that if Israel does respond to Hamas in Lebanon with pinpoint airstrikes, and lets Hezbollah know it has no interest in hitting it, Hezbollah might not feel compelled to respond. Hezbollah won’t mind Hamas absorbing blows from Israel, while it remains unscathed. After all, Hezbollah now regards Hamas, newly ensconced in Palestinian camps in Lebanon, where it has begun to challenge Fatah for control, as its main rival for Iranian support. Hezbollah would not mind if Hamas again lobbed enough rockets from Gaza or Lebanon into Israel to trigger massive retaliation by Israel on Hamas, akin to the campaign it carried on so effectively during 11 days last May, but this time the IDF will be able to target the terror group both in Gaza and in the Lebanese camps.