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Friday, May 26, 2017

Hypocrisy alert: Lebanon almost finished building a wall, with 4 watchtowers, around 100,000 Palestinians


You know how "human rights" groups and "pro-Palestinian" groups love to say that Israel puts Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank in an "open-air prison"?

You know how the media will exhaustively cover any defensive measures Israel does to protect itself from terrorists that live among the Palestinians as "collective punishment"?

You know how Israel's security fence that has saved hundreds or thousands of lives is routinely denounced because it inconveniences some Arabs?

You know how Palestinian leaders will send official complaints to the UN for everything Israel does, or allegedly does, that has the slightest impact on the slightest number of Palestinian Arabs?

Finally, a final  question: How much have you read or heard about a literal open-air prison, complete with watchtowers, being built around a Palestinian UNRWA camp in Lebanon that houses some 120,000 people?

From Daily Star Lebanon:
Construction of a controversial concrete wall barrier around the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp has resumed following a brief halt.

The past few weeks have seen a surge in concrete wall’s construction. A security source told The Daily Star that the wall is now “80 percent complete.”

Palestinian officials and popular committee members at the south Lebanon camp have reached tentative agreements following discussions with the army.

However, Palestinian refugees are dealing with various problems due to the wall’s construction. Omm Issam’s home had several of its rooms taken down due to its proximity to the wall.

A source told The Daily Star that the wall will run through “hundreds” of houses.

Abu Yassin, whose home and orange garden are dwarfed by the wall, mockingly says that the wall is now his neighbor.

In November 2016, it was announced that an agreement had been made between the Lebanese Army and the Palestinian factions to construct a wall and erect watchtowers around Ain al-Hilweh, and that the process was well underway.

The move was to maintain security in the camp, which has been rocked by clashes, most recently in April. The nearly six days of continuous clashes left at least 10 dead and over 50 wounded.

Despite an initial agreement between the Lebanese Army and Palestinian factions, opposition to the wall mounted during the construction process, forcing the army to temporarily halt construction.

“The Palestinian factions implicitly agree on it [despite vocal objection later on],” a source told The Daily Star in February.
The hypocrisy is stunning. Palestinian "leaders" agreed to build this prison, and the only ones who oppose it are the actual people affected, who have no voice.  (Terror groups like Hamas and PFLP are the only organized groups that opposed the wall. Hezbollah supports it completely as a decision by the Lebanese government to "prevent terrorists from infiltrating the country."

Mahmoud Abbas visited Lebanon in February and did not say a word against this wall.

To be sure, Ain el Hilweh is a violent mess, and a terror group associated with Al Qaeda, Bilal al Badr, has infiltrated the camp and clashes regularly with Palestinian forces (Fatah, PFLP, DFLP) an the Lebanese Army. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees of Palestinian descent have crammed into the already crowded camp because they cannot be treated like normal refugees thanks to the existence of UNRWA. Lebanon does not allow Palestinians to become citizens even after 70 years of them living in these wretched conditions and has specifically anti-Palestinian laws on the books.

But the silence from NGOs, the UN, Palestinian leaders and world media over what can literally be called a prison, with concrete walls and watchtowers, being built by the Lebanese government, shows how sickeningly hypocritical the entire world is.

No one gives a damn about Palestinians unless Jews can be blamed.

(h/t EBoZ)




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