Beirut/Tripoli, Lebanon — The entrance to the Burj Barajneh refugee camp is covered in the small yellow flags of the Palestinian group Fatah displaying the faces of the late Yasser Arafat and his successor, current Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.
But these are not the men of the hour. That honour is for a man whose face is unknown because he covers it with a red keffiyeh: Abu Obaida, the spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades.
Fatah and Hamas are opponents with presences in Lebanon, although they often have competing agendas politically or even militarily, but that does not filter down to the Palestinians there.
“I’m not with any party, not Fatah or Hamas,” Hassan, a Palestinian refugee in his mid-20s, told Al Jazeera from under the sea of yellow.
But, Hassan adds, he likes Abu Obaida because: “We’re with anyone who helps the Palestinian cause.”
On October 7, Qassam Brigades and other armed Palestinian factions launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, an attack on Israel during which 1,139 civilians and Israeli security personnel died and another 240 or so were taken into Gaza.
Israel responded with a vicious campaign of retribution that has now killed more than 28,000 people and displaced more than two million people, or 90 percent of Gaza’s population, to the horror of Palestinians and their supporters all over the world.
Israel has also intensified attacks on southern Lebanon in recent days, amid heightened tension with the Hezbollah armed group that dominates the region. On Wednesday, Israeli strikes in Lebanon killed 10 civilians.
Amid the destruction and death, Palestinians in Lebanon and many Lebanese have formed an affinity to movements they feel are standing up to Israel effectively.
A Palestinian presence in Lebanon for 75 years
After the 1948 Nakba, many Palestinian refugee camps were established in Lebanon and 12 remain today across the country, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), with a handful in the capital, Beirut. Each camp has its political dynamics but, historically, Fatah has been the strongest political and social force.
The group firmly established itself in the camps in the 1960s and 1970s, thanks in part to the Cairo Accord, which transferred control over the camps from the Lebanese army to the Palestinian Armed Struggle Command.
By the time the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975, Fatah had established what many considered a state within a state, with checkpoints and roadblocks that earned parts of south Lebanon the label “Fatahland”.
But that ability to mobilise has faded a bit over time, with many Palestinians in Lebanon now disillusioned with the status quo and looking to emigrate rather than stay in camps with few political or economic rights or opportunities.
“Many are with neither [Fatah nor Hamas],” said Marie Kortam, associate researcher at the French Institute of the Near East specialising in Palestinian groups.
Is Hamas making inroads?
Analysts say Hamas is trying to use its moment in the spotlight and the unhappy conditions in the refugee camps to recruit and grow its influence in Lebanon. In early December, Hamas announced “Vanguards of Al-Aqsa Flood”, a recruitment drive it said was to find new political and social cadres.
“[They] are trying to form a cadre of politicians and supporters in order to instil in them morals, values and a political formation,” Kortam said.
While the Palestinian camps support Abu Obaida, Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar and Qassam Brigades head Mohammed Deif, it is for the resistance they represent, not their party, Kortam maintains. “Hamas is not rooted in the camps like Fatah,” Kortam said.
While it is perhaps not as historically strong as Fatah, Hamas “has gained popularity specifically among Sunnis in Lebanon” since October 7, Mohanad Hage Ali, an expert on Islamist groups at the Carnegie Middle East Center, said.
In late October, Hamas organised a large protest in downtown Beirut. Thousands of people were bussed in from around the country to take part as green Hamas flags filled Martyr’s Square. While much of the crowd was Palestinian, many Lebanese were also present and some had travelled for hours to get there.
On a cold evening in February, Abu Iyad, a 38-year-old Lebanese man, sat at a table in the corner of a cafe off Azmi Street in Tripoli.
“We’re with the people of Gaza and if the border was open, maybe people would go,” Abu Iyad, who works as a sports teacher, told Al Jazeera. “Look at Syria and Iraq.”
During the Syrian civil war, many young men from north Lebanon, including Tripoli, joined groups fighting against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Yet, while many in Lebanon’s north are moved or outraged by the violence in Gaza and support the Palestinian cause, they have not mobilised politically or militarily.
While there has been gossip about at least one Lebanese father naming his newborn son Obaida, so he can be called Abu Obaida, support for Hamas or the Palestinian resistance here is less steadfast than in the Palestinian camps.
Smoking a cigarette outside his cafe near the Tripoli fairgrounds, Hajj Kamal said young people in Tripoli could offer little to the people of Gaza aside from solidarity. “What are we supposed to do, send them an OMT?” he asked mockingly, referring to a Lebanese money transfer service.
In November, two men from Tripoli, Lebanon’s second city, were killed when the car they were in was hit by an Israeli strike in south Lebanon. Also in the car was a Hamas operative and two Turkish citizens who had recently landed in the country.
Tripoli is a Sunni stronghold in Lebanon’s north not far from the border with Syria. The fact two men from there were killed along with a Hamas operative in the south, an area where Hezbollah holds military dominance, raised questions over whether Hamas was recruiting from outside their traditional base.
But residents in Tripoli say there have not been any mass mobilisation drives in their city.
Hezbollah controls military activity
Hamas’s Qassam Brigades are militarily active in Lebanon, a presence facilitated by close relations with Hezbollah.
Things were not always this close, as the relationship had fractured during the Syrian civil war when Hamas sided with forces opposing Bashar al-Assad, one of Hezbollah’s staunchest allies.
When Sinwar took the helm of Hamas in Gaza in 2017, a rapprochement with Iran and Hezbollah ensued and some Hamas leaders, including the recently assassinated Saleh al-Arouri, the West Bank’s Qassam Brigades leader, relocated to Lebanon.
Since October 7, Hamas has launched military operations from Lebanon – like 16 rockets launched at Israel that the Qassam Brigades claimed – but they remain under the Hezbollah umbrella.
“It’s part of an agenda,” said Manal Kortam, a Palestinian activist in Lebanon (and Marie’s sister). “Hezbollah is hosting them. There’s no rocket if Hezbollah doesn’t give them the green light.”
