Summary
The 1985-1988 campaigns in which the predominantly Shi’i militia Amal, working with the Lebanese Armed Forces’ 6th Brigade and the Syrian government, tried to expel all members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Fateh from the Palestinian camps in Beirut, Saida and Sur, using different repertoires of violence in each city (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.34).
Details
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In the Introduction’s framing, Amal employed different repertoires in Saida than in Beirut and Sur, and multiple different repertoires within Sur, while Palestinian regional officers coordinated strategy city by city (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.34).
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Women of the 1980s underground, such as Nafisa in Burj al-Barajneh, served on the camps’ interfactional defensive fronts during the sieges; the dead were buried under the camp alleyways, and a high-ranking Fatah woman’s lack of an official portrait is explained in the book by her importance dating to this war (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.44, p.46).
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Ties built in the PLO’s 1970-1971 cultural and union work were, Parkinson reports, often called upon during the Israeli occupation and the 1985-1988 War of the Camps (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.62).
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Parkinson traces knowledge transfer into this war: fighters from Burj al-Shamali later transferred the camp-defence model developed against the IDF in 1982 to Shatila and Burj al-Barajneh during the War of the Camps, relying on preexisting networks (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.83).
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The Burj al-Shamali community’s later decision not to engage in direct hostilities with the Syrian-backed Amal militia during this war is linked by several interlocutors to the June 7, 1982 bombing of the Nadi al-Houli clubhouse, in which ninety-four civilians died (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.81).
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Chapter 6 gives the siege sequence in detail: Amal and the LAF Sixth Brigade bombarded the camps, blockaded Shatila and Burj al-Barajneh repeatedly in 1985-1986 and imposed a six-month complete blockade beginning at Rashidiyeh in September 1986, with no food, medicine or fuel allowed and residents eventually eating mules, grass, rats, dogs and cats; PLO and Palestinian National Salvation Front members cooperated in civil and military defence under a shared “mihwar” perimeter system, defying their exiled leaderships (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.145-149).
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Ali Abu Tawq commanded Shatila’s and Burj al-Barajneh’s defences and refused Arafat’s 1986 order to violate a ceasefire with Amal, for which Arafat cut his payroll allowance (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.138, p.154).
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Chapter 7 contrasts the war’s organizational outcomes by city: in Saida, hyperlocal violence and PLO reinfiltration produced insular, personalized militias in Ain al-Hilweh and a fragmented, autonomous-sector guerrilla front at Magdousheh (“every party for itself”), while in Sur Burj al-Shamali declared neutrality yet supplied besieged Rashidiyeh, which fought as a unified front (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.160-161, p.167-171).
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By the war’s end the DFLP and Palestinian Communist Party had resumed political dialogue with Fatah and the PFLP, PPSF and PLF tacitly followed Fatah’s lead in the camps, while Amal, the Syrians and their allies expelled known surviving Fatah officers from Beirut (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.156).
Related pages
Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, Amal, Fateh, Palestine Liberation Organization