Palestinians stabilising Lebanon, claims Hamas

Ali Baraka, the representative of the Hamas organisation in Lebanon said Palestinians would be nothing but a "stabilising factor as they are not part of any internal conflict." "We want to prevent any sectarian strife because that would affect everyone not just Lebanon and it would only serve the Zionist enemy." Sectarian tensions and the spillover of the war in Syria in recent months have caused several incidents of violence in Lebanon, including a car bombing in Beirut’s southern suburbs and attacks against the Lebanese army in Sidon and in the north of the country. Baraka denied that radical Islamist groups, such as al-Qaeda and its affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra Front, had any presence in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps. But he highlighted the worsening humanitarian situation there, exacerbated by the arrival of Syrians and Palestinians fleeing the violence next door. For example, the Burj al-Barajneh camp in southern Beirut now houses 30,000 people inside a square kilometre of land. Baraka urged the government to allow the building of temporary shelters around the camps and in public schools to house the refugees, whose ranks have swelled beyond the camps’ capacities. "We don’t want new camps," he said. "I want to reassure the Lebanese, we want to dismantle these camps and return to Palestine."