Colonel Munir Al-Maqdah was number ten on a deck of 38 cards made by the Israeli secret service during the Al-Aqsa Intifida in 2000. At the time of writing only six are still alive. He is the founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and the Black September 13th Phalanxes, which have carried out suicide bombing attacks against Israel.

In 2000 he was sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan in connection with the Millennium Bomb Plot. It has been widely alleged that he has provided training and support for Palestinian recruits for the resistance movement in Iraq. He has survived over a hundred recorded attempts on his life.

The Colonel’s bodyguards constantly adjust and re-adjust their automatic rifles, swinging them from one shoulder to the other. Dressed in U.S. desert camouflages, one of the many recipients of over several billion dollars worth of US equipment that have disappeared in Iraq, and early nineties Nike Air Maxes, they alternate between slouching on battered leather arm chairs or pacing across the room. In contrast Colonel Munir al-Maqdah in an olive green shirt and greying beard is a figure of total composure and control. Throughout the interviews he smoked ultra-slim cigarettes.

At the time of the interview, the first given in his new role, he had just rejoined the Fatah political mainstream, having chosen a semi-autonomous path since 1993 in protest at the Oslo Accords. Ten days earlier he had been made commander of the Ain-el Hilweh refugee camp. During the course of the interview his aides appointed him a general as “a symbol of the great love the people have for him as our commander”.

The area of Ain el-Hilewh is prefixed in the Lebanese press with terms such as “radical”, “lawless”, and “restive” and has for the last forty years been outside the control of Lebanese central authority, while control of the camps is divided between various Palestinian factions.

At a time when the Fatah dominated Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) is losing its control of the Palestinian scene, both in the Hamas-occupied Gaza Strip, and in the refugee camps to radical Islamist splinter groups, this new position is a sign that both the PLO and the Lebanese government now need a power-broker of al-Maqdah’s status to prevent a descent into civil war both in Lebanon and amongst the Palestinian community in the camps. There are an estimated half million Palestinian refugees, predominantly Sunni Muslim and Greek Orthodox, in Lebanon, constituting around ten per cent of the country’s total resident population.

Ain el-Hilweh is an overcrowded open-air prison, housing 80,000 refugees-turned-inmates in area of just over a square kilometre. It is encircled by Lebanese army check-points controlling those who enter and exit the camps. Foreigners are only allowed entry with an army permit.

Just beyond the check point lies a no-man’s land of about twenty metres, the site of clashes between the Islamist group Jund al Sham and the secular Fatah. The Fatah check-point sits below a banner of Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat shaking hands against the backdrop of Al-Aqasa (the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem). It is an evocative reminder both of the late Iraqi president’s financial generosity towards the Palestinian cause and of his posthumous status as a symbol of anti-Americanism.

The camps are steeped in the human misery of a people who have been systematically de-humanised for the last sixty years, since the Nabka in 1948 (the massive Palestinian exodus). Yet they manage to survive in the enforced squalor of a place where even construction is illegal.

Unemployment stands at around seventy per cent, hardly surprising when the Lebanese authorities, desperate not to upset the country’s delicate sectarian balance, have barred the Palestinian population from over 72 professions. In summer the temperatures soars above forty degrees, and the lack of electricity and poor sanitation makes working almost unbearable. During the autumn the rains turn the dirt roads into open sewers.

Al-Maqdah (47) was born in Ain el-Hilweh and has spent most of his life in Lebanon. I asked him what it meant to be Palestinian.
“To be a refugee, it is a special word. You feel that you are a stranger, you live outside your home, in exile, you have no home –this you can feel from your childhood. You are missing a part of yourself. When you see a Palestine baby you can see the sadness in his face. We are deprived from anything that would make us human. It is a pitiful life. The Israeli aircraft bomb these shelters; if you don’t know that you are a Palestinian, you only need to hear the aircraft. The aircraft know that you are Palestinian.” (The Israelis have almost continuously bombed the refugee camp over the last sixty years, most recently in last year’s conflict, killing seven and destroying much of the camp’s basic infrastructure). “And we are alone.”

It is a sentiment repeated by many Palestinians in the camps. I asked a similar question to another militant.
“It was when I realised that if I was ill I would go to the UNRWA (United Nations Refugees in Western Asia Agency) medical office, not to the Lebanese hospital. It was when I could not leave the camp when I wished. It is these small things that made me realise from a very small child that I was not from here. It is from this beginning that made me wonder where I was from, where my home was, and why I could not go there.”

Munir al-Maqdah has spent his entire life in the Palestinian resistance. He joined the al-Shabiba wing of al-Fatah at the age of eleven. He shot to fame as a young commander during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and subsequently as a result of his role during the intifadas of 1987-1993 and 2000. Neither his age nor the reasons for joining the armed Palestinian struggle are exceptional.
“Our everyday life is permeated with an atmosphere of suffering and pain. The resistance restores our status as human beings, it is the vehicle to bring about our overwhelming desire to return to our homeland. Al-Fatah were the first group to fire the first bullet against the occupier [Israel], they transformed us from refugees to resistance fighters.”

The goal of liberating Palestine has been put on hold, as the Fatah-dominated PLO is struggling to maintain control inside the occupied territories, and in the refugee camps in the neighbouring countries. Despite sporadic clashes between the Islamist group Jund al Sham and Fatah throughout the summer, al-Maqdah is confident that the PLO will remain in control of the camps and these incidents were isolated, and that his Fatah group can maintain leadership of the Palestinian cause.

“Whatever happened in Gaza will not be allowed to happen here. There are enough problems from beneath the earth and above our heads. Whatever happens in Gaza, let it stay in Gaza. We have suffered enough for 60 years without internal problems. Here Hamas are represented in the General Palestinian Union. I am a patient person, I will have dialogue with any organisation, representing Palestinians, I can make them come here to work with me, work with me to stop any conflict, and to work for our common goal.”

Al-Maqdah is a strict Palestinian nationalist, far from the freelance terror operator that several commentators have accused him of being. He appears willing to co-operate with all groups that support his goal of liberating Palestine and opposing Israel.

However, since the mid-1980s, armed Palestinian groups are no longer the main military opposition to Israel in Lebanon. That title goes to Hezbollah, the armed Shi’ia group formed in response to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. The relationship between the Palestinian groups and Hezbollah is often unclear, although both see themselves as opposing Israel their sectarian and political visions differ, with the Palestinians being predominantly Sunni and Christian and Hezbollah mostly Shi’ia.

“Hezbollah are a resistance movement, and any resistance movements are welcomed by us, always we are in contact with them. Abbas Zaki (The PLO ambassador in Lebanon) is in contact with them, we need to keep contact with all resistance groups.”
I asked Al-Maqdah what his forces did during last year’s conflict with Israel, a war that was reported as being strictly between Hezbollah and Israel.

“During the invasion whoever was inside the country fought against Israel. All that we had we put at the hands of the Lebanese Army, whatever we had in our hands to resist the invasion we did it. If the Lebanese army allowed us to share in the ground battle, we would have done it .”

At this point I butted in. “Last year’s war was between Hezbollah and Israel, the Lebanese army did not participate.” After my point was translated, everyone in the room burst into peals of laughter, apart from his political advisor who looked nervous.
“Around 60 martyrs in the Lebanese army have been created from the war. They used their anti-aircraft weapons against the Israelis,” Al-Maqdah said. It is an embarrassing admission for the Western-backed Lebanese government, who claimed strict non-interference in last year’s war.

Al-Maqdah is very clear in differentiating between what he sees as legitimate resistance and terrorism. In particular he is critical of the radical Islamist groups that have emerged in the last few years in the camps, often numbering not more than a hundred members.

“My new job, will allow me to make sure that religious extremism will not affect the generation who are now between 15 to 18. We are now in the process, to protect this generation to avoid such religious extremism, we are starting to rebuild our culture, social and traditional establishments here. We cannot let this new generation speak the language of terror. The student establishments are very important, for school and university students – to protect them, for the young are very sensitive to these things.”

“Unemployment is around 70%. These economic problems, create situations where someone like Sheik Abbsi with money can create problems.” Sheik Abbsi is the leader of Fatah-al-Islam, the Islamist group which took over the northern refugee of camp of Nahr al-Bared and for three months fought against the Lebanese army in what was Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the civil war.

Although al-Maqdah was supportive of the Lebanese army’s fight with Fatah al Islam in the camp of Nahr al-Bared, he was critical of what he saw as the disproportionate response of the army, which has gone to great lengths to present the conflict as between Lebanon and Fatah al Islam, and not against the Palestinian community.

“Around 35,000 refugees from Nahr al-Bared have been created. What little they had was destroyed, they have been refugees twice over. Now the winter is coming, and they will have no shelter.”

I was in Nahr al-Bared on the final day of fighting between Fatah al-Islam and the army before the group’s final stand after three months of almost continuous fighting. By that stage the Lebanese army were bombing rubble and mortaring the militants’ bunkers, which were obscured by the mangled skeletons of destroyed buildings. Amazingly the militants, who by that stage numbered fewer than 50, managed to occasionally respond with volleys of gunfire.

It is hard to imagine that any form of human habitation would be possible there before the beginning of next year, but nevertheless the refugees from Nahr al Bared are demanding a right of return to the camp as soon as possible. They are currently in the neighbouring camp of Beddawi, and the ones I talked to said that their homes in Nahr al Bared are the closest surrogate to Palestine.

Al-Maqdah reserves his anger towards the Western governments for what he sees as their encouragement and perpetuating of oppression in the Middle East. “This American and Zionist project, starting in Palestine and now in Iraq, is a project to divide the Arab nation in pieces. Terror will beget terror, murder will beget murder, crime will beget crime.”

But he claims he no longer provides the training or support for the resistance in Iraq, saying that it has a momentum of its own, and that the soldiers he sent at the beginning of the American occupation were simply a symbol of the solidarity between the Palestinian and Iraqi people as people both under foreign occupation.

At times you can detect a weariness in al-Maqdah. A military man who has spent his entire life fighting, he is now desperately struggling to maintain Palestinian unity. At times Al-Maqdah feels obliged to re-iterate the official PLO line that his immediate priorities are to improve the civil rights of Palestinians in Lebanon, while all the time the dream of returning to Palestine remains as elusive as ever. It is a direction that al-Maqdah, the poacher turned gamekeeper, is not totally comfortable with, as I leave for the final time, he shakes my hand and kisses me on both cheeks. He looks me in the eye and tells me: “The next time I see you, I will see you in Al-Quds Al-Arabiyya [Arab Jerusalem.]”

Krishnan Nagrendan