23 October 2023 

Saida, Lebanon — Palestinian fighters in Lebanon are ready for battle, as the country’s southern border emerges as a potential second front in the war between Hamas and Israel. 

“Because I’m Palestinian, it’s my right to fight,” Mahmoud Sarhan, a military officer for the Palestinian party, Fatah, said from his home in Ein al-Hilweh, the largest camp for Palestinian refugees in the country. 

“Israel took over our land and we must fight to return,” the officer stated.

Ein al-Hilweh, like other Palestinian camps in the country, is a safe haven for various Palestinian militant groups and a breeding ground for their fighters. In recent years, Hamas and other Iran-backed groups have grown more powerful in the camp, at times threatening the long-held authority of Fatah, their political adversary.

But the high tensions between vying Palestinian factions in the camp have temporarily cooled as the factions unite against their common enemy, Israel. “In the war with Israel, all political arguments are forgotten,” the media officer for Fatah in Ein al-Hilweh, Yusuf al-Zuraei, said.

Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is not part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” and its strategy toward Israel tends to focus on negotiations, rather than armed resistance. But if the war escalates in Lebanon, al-Zuraei said that the party’s 4000 fighters in the country are “ready.” 

“Fatah will be there, fighting with Hezbollah,” the spokesperson said.