Decoding the Abou Moussa statement

Michael Young
Daily Star (Lebanon)
21 January '10

There was something vaguely surrealistic in the Lebanese government’s response on Tuesday to the reservations expressed last weekend by Abou Moussa, the secretary of Fatah al-Intifada, about ending the Palestinian military presence outside the refugee camps. In response to a subsequent remark by the Palestinian official that he would accept a dialogue on the matter, the government declared, “Sovereignty cannot be negotiated.”

Of course it cannot be, but as everyone realized when Abou Moussa announced that he would refuse to disarm his group (and in the presence of Sidon’s mayor no less, a political enemy of the Hariri family), he was transmitting a message from Syria, which undermines Lebanese sovereignty on a daily basis. That’s because Fatah al-Intifada is a Syrian creation. It was established as a breakaway faction from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement in May 1983, as the Palestinian leader prepared to battle Syria to secure a foothold in Tripoli. The Syrians didn’t want their old enemy there, engineered the rift in his movement, then expelled Arafat from the north.

The decision to terminate the armed Palestinian presence outside the refugee camps, but also to remove military outposts of pro-Syrian Palestinian groups located inside Lebanese territory along the eastern border, was agreed during the national dialogue sessions of 2006. So, what were the Syrian intentions in ordering Abu Moussa to take the position that he did and defy the Lebanese consensus?

There seemed to be four primary objectives. First, and more generally, to put up obstacles to political normalization in Lebanon, and in that way strengthen Syria’s bargaining hand in shaping Lebanese government decisions whose outcome will determine how much power Damascus regains in Beirut. This includes, above all, security and administrative appointments, through which the Syrians hope to place political allies in positions of authority, eliminating most of the practical vestiges of sovereignty.

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