Tripoli, Lebanon – Palestinian mediators pressed for a negotiated solution to a week-long siege of a Palestinian refugee camp Sunday, with the Lebanese government demanding the surrender of Islamic militants inside but reluctant to rush into an all-out assault.
The leader of the Fatah Islam militants said his fighters would not surrender.
“We wish to die for the sake of God,” Shaker Youssef al-Absi said on al-Jazeera on Saturday. “Sunni people are the spearhead against the Zionist Americans.”
Al-Absi, a Palestinian, has said he is inspired by Osama bin Laden and has been linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Mainstream Palestinian factions have distanced themselves from him.
The Lebanese government was in a bind over its campaign to uproot Fatah Islam militants barricaded inside the Nahr el- Bared refugee camp. An attack to crush the fighters could be bloody – for both troops and the thousands of Palestinian civilians still trapped inside.
It would also risk deepening Lebanon’s political divisions.
Despite sporadic exchanges of gunfire, a fragile truce has held at the camp in northern Lebanon for five days, with hundreds of Lebanese troops surrounding the camp and building up their forces – with U.S. military help – to prepare for an attack.
The truce followed three days of heavy fighting at the camp in which 20 civilians, 30 Lebanese soldiers and up to 60 militants were killed.
