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Abbas: Palestinians should not stay in Lebanon
Palestinian leader insists Palestinian refugees have right to return after talks with Lebanese counterpart.
BEIRUT - Palestinian refugees in Lebanon should not be permanently resettled in the country, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Thursday after talks in Beirut with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman.
“The Palestinians have the right of return and this is an issue we are discussing with the Israelis,” Abbas told a media conference after the meeting.
“We are against the resettlement of Palestinians in Lebanon,” he added.
An estimated 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in 12 camps in Lebanon. According to the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), there are around 4.6 million Palestinian refugees worldwide.
Most of Palestinian refugees came to Lebanon when the state of Israel was created in 1948. There are fears among the Lebanese that their settlement will be permanent, shifting the country’s delicate sectarian balance.
Abbas said that any solution with Israel should be wide-ranging and address all issues.
“I told the president if we want to reach a solution with Israel, it should be a comprehensive one,” Abbas told reporters.
“It may not be easy, but we want to reach a political solution to our cause. It’s important to us to end the occupation of the Golan and the Shebaa Farms,” he added.
The Shebaa Farms, a mountainous sliver of land rich in water resources measuring 25 square kilometres (10 square miles), are located at the junction of southeast Lebanon, southwest Syria and northern Israel.
Israel seized the Farms from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war when it captured the neighbouring Golan Heights which it later annexed.
Israel and the Palestinians formally relaunched the peace process after a seven-year hiatus at a US-hosted conference last November, with the goal of signing a full peace deal by the time President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009.
But they have made little tangible progress on resolving the core issues of the conflict, including final borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of the millions of UN-registered Palestinian refugees.
Abbas said he endorsed the Lebanese government’s decision in 2006 that armed pro-Syrian Palestinian groups outside of the camps should be disarmed.
“We are with the decision of the Lebanese government in terms of Palestinian weapons… In Lebanon, we are under the law and not above it,” Abbas said.
The Palestinian camps in Lebanon are considered to be unstable, with security incidents taking place frequently and extremist groups often taking advantage of the poor state of the camps.
Last year the army fought a deadly 15-week battle against Fatah al-Islam, which adopted an ideology inspired by Al-Qaeda, in the northern refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared.
More than 400 people, including 168 soldiers, were killed in the fighting which left the camp almost entirely destroyed.
Abbas, whose last visit to Beirut in 2004 was the first for a Palestinian official in 22 years, was during his two-day visit to meet Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and parliament speaker Nabih Berri as well as Palestinian officials. Subscribe=>
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