A Palestinian Civil War in Lebanon?

Mahmoud Abbas keeps getting weaker. The Palestinian president and his secular, moderate Fatah movement has been losing ground in the Palestinian territories ever since the Islamic party Hamas won the Gaza elections in 2005. Still, at least Fatah remained the most powerful party among Palestinians living abroad, especially among the 400,000 refuges in Lebanon. Now however, Abbas's power is being challenged in what could shape up to be a mini inter-Palestinian civil war fought out in Lebanon's lawless refugee camps.

Last week, Fatah rivals staged an assassination attempt against Abbas' chosen man in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, according to both Palestinian officials, who gave TIME details of the unreported event, and to Lebanese security officials who confirmed the account. The would-be assassin was nabbed just as he was about to plant a car bomb in front of the Palestinian embassy in Beirut. Under what was no doubt less-than-polite questioning in one of Fatah's prisons inside the camps, the suspect fingered the number two Palestinian leader in Lebanon, Sultan Abul Ainain, whose name means “the Emperor of Eyes.” Sultan is a warlord of the old school, accused by Lebanese authorities of heading a jihaddist sleeper cell and various mafioso-style criminal activities.

President Abbas sent Zaki to Lebanon three years ago in order to clean up Sultan's mess. Conditions inside Palestinian camps in Lebanon are miserable, in large part because of institutionalized discrimination by the Lebanese, but also because of corruption among Palestinian leaders. But Sultan reportedly has allies of his own: notably the intelligence agencies of pro-American Sunni Muslim Arab countries such Saudi Arabia and Egypt, according to Lebanese newspapers. These countries might have an interest in supporting Sunni Palestinian militants as a possible counter-balance to Hizballah, the Shia Muslim militia that is currently trying to bring down the Saudi and American-backed Lebanese government. Though there is no known connection between Sultan and the Americans, he and his men carry the latest in American-made light assault weapons.

The episode has some eerie echoes of the inter-Palestinian civil war in Gaza last year (albeit on a much smaller scale.) In Gaza, Fatah leaders backed by the Bush administration tried to stage a coup against the democratically elected Hamas government. As in Lebanon, those Fatah leaders had a widespread reputation for corruption and crime, and the resulting chaos in Gaza only strengthened Hamas and those groups opposed to peace with Israel.

President Abbas wants Sultan to face trial in a Palestinian court in Jordan. But the warlord – holed up among his faithful in south Lebanon -- is unlikely to go quietly. In the event of an inter-Fatah civil war in Lebanon, (which Sultan would probably win) it is hard to imagine how Abbas could command enough respect among Palestinians to pull off a peace deal with Israel. But at this point, it's hard enough to imagine peace in the Middle East anyway.

--Andrew Lee Butters with reporting by Rami Aysha/Beirut