ABSTRACT

Introduction In late May 2007, heavy fighting broke out between the Lebanese Army and a new militia group calling itself ‘Fatah al-Islam’ based in Nahr el-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli. After 15 weeks of intense bombardment and sniper fire, the camp was reduced to rubble and the death toll had reached 500, including around 250 militants and 169 army troops; another 400-500 soldiers were wounded, leaving many of them permanently disabled. At least 33 civilians were also killed in the bloody standoff that had forced the camp’s approximately 30,000 residents to flee, many of them to the Beddawi refugee camp located 10 kilometres to the south. This was the biggest violent incident since the civil war ended. The Army’s hard-won victory was praised by all parties – even by some of the Palestinian representatives – but the battle added significantly to the country’s political turmoil and sectarian tensions. The unrelenting pounding of the Nahr el-Bared camp came after a three-year period of thawing of relations between the Lebanese authorities and Palestinians, which had been deadlocked since the early 1990s (Knudsen 2009).