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Hamas Seeks to Enhance Popularity in Lebanon’s Palestinian Camps

Lebanese soldiers at the entrance to the Ain al-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon during clashes last summer between Palestinian factions (AFP)
Lebanese soldiers at the entrance to the Ain al-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon during clashes last summer between Palestinian factions (AFP)
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Hamas Seeks to Enhance Popularity in Lebanon’s Palestinian Camps

Lebanese soldiers at the entrance to the Ain al-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon during clashes last summer between Palestinian factions (AFP)
Lebanese soldiers at the entrance to the Ain al-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon during clashes last summer between Palestinian factions (AFP)

Palestinian officials in Lebanon consider the Hamas movement’s decision to establish a new unit under the name of the Vanguards of the Al-Aqsa Flood, as an effort to increase its popularity in the Palestinian camps and enhance its role at the expense of the Fatah movement, which has long been seen as the most prominent Palestinian faction in the country.
Palestinian sources close to Fatah believe that Hamas wants to exploit the war in Gaza to increase its popularity in the Palestinian refugee camps, in light of the great sympathy it enjoys after the Oct. 7.
They noted that the primary goal of the Vanguards of the Al-Aqsa Flood was to attract young people and mobilize them intellectually and then militarily to form the nucleus of a military force for Hamas outside Palestine.
Early last week, Hamas called on “young and heroic men” to join the “Vanguards of the resistance.” The movement’s sources later explained that the project was linked to Lebanon and “does not aim exclusively to gather more fighters, but rather to include more individuals in Hamas, who are active in more than one segment.”
Ghassan Ayoub, a member of the Palestinian Joint Action Committee in Lebanon, told Asharq Al-Awsat that there was “a rush on the part of the movement to search for how to invest in the aggression against Gaza.”
For his part, the director of the Development Center for Strategic Studies and Human Development, Palestinian Researcher Hisham Dibsi, pointed to “field data in the camps indicating that [Hamas] wants to invest in this militia formation, by attracting the largest possible number of members, who are dazzled by the acts of violence, fighting, and victories that Hamas claims to have achieved.”
According to the Lebanese Central Bureau of Statistics and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, there are 230,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon living in 12 camps and 156 Palestinian communities in the governorates of Lebanon.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), in a census conducted about 11 years ago, confirmed the presence of more than 483,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

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Cash Crunch Leaves Syrians Queueing for Hours to Collect Salaries

Syrian civil servants must queue at one of two state banks or affiliated ATMs, and withdrawals are capped. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
Syrian civil servants must queue at one of two state banks or affiliated ATMs, and withdrawals are capped. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
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Cash Crunch Leaves Syrians Queueing for Hours to Collect Salaries

Syrian civil servants must queue at one of two state banks or affiliated ATMs, and withdrawals are capped. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
Syrian civil servants must queue at one of two state banks or affiliated ATMs, and withdrawals are capped. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP

Seated on the pavement outside a bank in central Damascus, Abu Fares's face is worn with exhaustion as he waits to collect a small portion of his pension.
"I've been here for four hours and I haven't so much as touched my pension," said the 77-year-old, who did not wish to give his full name.

"The cash dispensers are under-stocked and the queues are long," he continued.

Since the overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad last December, Syria has been struggling to emerge from the wake of nearly 14 years of civil war, and its banking sector is no exception.

Decades of punishing sanctions imposed on the Assad dynasty -- which the new authorities are seeking to have lifted -- have left about 90 percent of Syrians under the poverty line, according to the United Nations.

The liquidity crisis has forced authorities to drastically limit cash withdrawals, leaving much of the population struggling to make ends meet.

Prior to his ousting, Assad's key ally Russia held a monopoly on printing banknotes. The new authorities have only announced once that they have received a shipment of banknotes from Moscow since Assad's overthrow.
In a country with about 1.25 million public sector employees, civil servants must queue at one of two state banks or affiliated ATMs to make withdrawals, capped at about 200,000 Syrian pounds, the equivalent on the black market of $20 per day.

In some cases, they have to take a day off just to wait for the cash.

"There are sick people, elderly... we can't continue like this," said Abu Fares.

'Meagre sums'
"There is a clear lack of cash, and for that reason we deactivate the ATMs at the end of the workday," an employee at a private bank told AFP, preferring not to give her name.

A haphazard queue of about 300 people stretches outside the Commercial Bank of Syria. Some are sitting on the ground.

Afraa Jumaa, a civil servant, said she spends most of the money she withdraws on the travel fare to get to and from the bank.

"The conditions are difficult and we need to withdraw our salaries as quickly as possible," said the 43-year-old.
"It's not acceptable that we have to spend days to withdraw meagre sums."

The local currency has plunged in value since the civil war erupted in 2011, prior to which the dollar was valued at 50 pounds.

Economist Georges Khouzam explained that foreign exchange vendors -- whose work was outlawed under Assad -- "deliberately reduced cash flows in Syrian pounds to provoke rapid fluctuations in the market and turn a profit".

Muntaha Abbas, a 37-year-old civil servant, had to return three times to withdraw her entire salary of 500,000 pounds.

"There are a lot of ATMs in Damascus, but very few of them work," she said.

After a five-hour wait, she was finally able to withdraw 200,000 pounds.

"Queues and more queues... our lives have become a series of queues," she lamented.