Comment by _alxk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _alxk | Hacker News Reader

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>largely as a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon

Not accurate.

Until the early 90s and the rise of Hamas the most active Palestinian militant groups were secular, some were even Marxist/Leninist (as in, officially areligious).

Fatah, in control of the PLO, has always been secular and the second most active Palestinian militant group during the 1970s was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist organisation led by a Palestinian Christian.

Political Islam as a force in Palestinian politics started in the 90s and only really became a big thing during the second intifada in the early 2000s.

The Wikipedia page [1] makes for an interesting read if you want to understand more about the Lebanese Civil War and the many groups and foreign interests involved in this tragic conflict. As for the Palestinians, they had a large refugee population established in Lebanon and the PLO leadership wanted a base for their militias; the Lebanese state understandably didn't want a parallel state operating with militias within their borders; this lit the fuse on a country with an already fragile sectarian balance and dozens of sizeable minorities that had grief with the state and each other.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War

While the PLO tried to distinguish itself from Hamas by claiming to be more secular, make no mistake that they were clearly a muslim force.

I was too young to remember the civil war, but at least in the collective retelling of the story, it's commonly accepted that PLO tried to topple the Beirut government to install their own. There are many claims that Arafat wanted Lebanon to be an alternative for their "stolen" Palestine. If it's the first time you hear that, then I think it's likely you never talked to Lebanese people about the war and the PLO.

Arafat, the leader of the PLO, wasn't christian. That's ... weird you claim this. His name is Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini. That's as Muslim as it gets. He was even a member (or a close ally I don't know) of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It's tough to convey to non arabic speakers, but several politicians, PLO front and center, use the terms "Arabs" and "muslims" almost interchangeably.

The Lebanon "civil war" is a misnomer. For the majority of the time, it was a war between lebanese christian militias and palestinian invaders that were tolerated by the lebanese muslim groups.

Lebanon's history and the civil war are complex and I'm not doing a good job of explaining then in a HN comment. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that islam has become more strict in the palestinian ranks after the 90s. This may be true. But I assure you that from the late 50s to the late 80s, they were trying to kick the non-muslims out of Lebanon by force.

> PLO tried to distinguish itself from Hamas by claiming to be more secular

Hamas was founded in 1989, a bit late for participation in the Lebanese civil war.

> Arafat, the leader of the PLO, wasn't christian. That's ... weird you claim this.

I'm talking about the leader of the PFLP, George Habash, which was the second largest Palestinian force at the time and operating in Lebanon during the civil war.

> they were trying to kick the non-muslims out of Lebanon by force.

I'm not disputing that the intention of the PLO was to anchor themselves in Lebanon (out of the control of the Lebanese state, even if that meant toppling it) and use it as a base, but I'm going to need some sources for the claim that the PLO wanted to "kick the non-muslims out of Lebanon".

Fair, not Hamas, the Islamic Jihad that came before it. It's not nearly the point of my reply, but good gotcha.

As for sources of how the PLO treated non-muslims during the civil war of lebanon, it's tough to find what you want. The whole civil war was about the christian factions vs the palestinian factions, with different entites in between with rapid shifting alliances.

There was no "Islamic Jihad" in Palestinian groups before the 90s. Religion wasn't a factor in Palestinian politics or militancy before Hamas, and Hamas only became a big player during the second intifada in the 2000s.

I understand you are from Lebanon and from a sectarian background, but that's maybe partly why you have a biased understanding of the groups, ideologies and foreign players involved. You may want to read some background on the history and the conflict from some other sources maybe starting with [1]. Palestinian militancy played a big role, but their religion did not and they were not trying to ethnically cleanse Lebanon or establish a theocracy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War

That's what I get for revealing my identity and sharing my stories. I'm told by strangers hiding behind their anonymous username that my views are "biased". Well, yeah, all views are "biased". Does it mean that those stories are not true?

Lebanon was divided around ethnic lines all throughout the war. On one hand, christian militias. On the other hand, palestinian militias. I know what they said about each other. I know how they killed and assassinated each other. I know how impossible it was to cross the line. I grew up there, I don't full remember the last years of the war, but I definitely remember the after-war and what people did afterwards.

Maybe it "just happens" that the Lebanese muslims sided with the 90+% muslim-palestians. But judged from living there for my whole life I might know that this isn't what they say. Not how they saw each other. The Lebanese muslims sided with the palestinians because of a percieved shared identity. Call it pan-arabism, call it whatever fancy term you want.

I am NOT saying that middle eastern christians are perpetually persecuted or that coexistence with muslims isn't possible. I'm not saying that the situation is the same today in 2022. I'm saying that at one specific moment in history, in one specific country in the middle east, the muslims have attempted (and succeeded at) toppling a non-muslim government that was seen as pro-west-anti-arab.

And to be clear, I agree with you that Lebanon was not a solid nation, was gonna implode anyway, and was dealing with internal conflict long before Palestine was a thing.

> There was no "Islamic Jihad" in Palestinian groups before the 90s.

I guess those guys aren't real then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Jihad_Movement_in_Pale...

They operated in lebanon. They operated from lebanon. They still operate from lebanon.

> I guess those guys aren't real then?

You didn't even check your own link I guess. That group's first attack was in 1984 when they operated out of Egypt and in the south of Israel/Palestine. Not a single one of their attacks happened in Lebanon during the civil war. Their presence in Lebanon starts in 1989, at the end of the civil war, and they have to this day not attacked a Lebanese target.

This confirms the point I've been communicating this entire thread that religion only became a driving force in Palestinian politics and militancy in the 1990s and Palestinian Islamism was not a factor in the Lebanese civil war.

> radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon

This is false and misrepresents Palestinian movements in the pre-1990s era and their objectives in Lebanon. That is all I wanted to point out.

I agree with the rest of what you said though.

I understand now what you are saying. I don't agree or disagree. Honestly I don't know enough about the topic.

See, for middle eastern, words like "muslim" or "chrisitans" or "jews" doesn't represent your spiritual beliefs. It represents ethnic belonging. To put it in a western perspective, your religion is not a mutable characteristic. I'm born "christian", but my level of belief in Jesus Christ has nothing to do with it.

You're saying the factions that fought in Lebanon didn't emphasize a islamist rhetoric until the 90s. From what I know from the earlier days of the war, there was a lot of talk of pan-arabism and arabic identity, not talk of an Islam nation, so what you're saying sounds plausible.

But from our middle eastern perspective, lebanese muslims allied themselves to other muslims from syria and palestine to topple the christian-led government. I was communicating the point that the factions involved were based on ethnicity.

People picture "wars" like soldiers in battlefields and there was some of that. But a LOT of the Lebanese war was undisciplined militiamen mass killing villages based on ethnic lines. On both sides. Plenty of massacres in christian villages because they were christians. Plenty of massacres in muslim villages because they were muslim. From our point of view, we saw was christian and muslims killing each other.

> radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon

The first time I read that quote, I didn't react to the words "radical Islamist", but read "palestinians had left palestine and wanted a state in lebanon". I guess this shows my bias after all :D

Now I'm curious what caused the change in the palestinian rhetoric. I'll try to read some more about it. Thanks for opening my eyes to this.

I would say the trend started before the 90s but it became apparent in the 90s.

It started in the 70s, before that all the islamist political groups were heavily repressed by Nasser and different nationalist leaders in the region, Sadat realignment, the Islamic revolution in Iran, and the commercialization of oil in the gulf countries opened the Pandora box for the different(and sometimes warring) groups inspired by different interpretations of Islam.

And didn't the House of Saud invest heavily in Islamist groups as a counterweight to the Arab Nationalists and to Iranian-style Islamic revolutionary influence?

Palestinian Islamism is mostly rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement originating in the 1920's Cairo

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