At least 150 Palestinians fled a northern refugee camp Wednesday in anticipation of an assault by the Lebanese army battling Islamic militants holed up inside.Notice how AP calls the people leaving the camp "Palestinian" but the terrorists inside the camp are only "Islamic." Are we to believe that a miserable "refugee" camp was infiltrated by non-Palestinian Arabs as a base to attack Lebanon?Most of the refugees left with the help of the Palestinian Red Crescent, said Samar Kadi, an International Committee of the Red Cross communications officer.
Those fleeing arrived on foot at the southern entrance of the Nahr el-Bared camp. They were searched by soldiers at a Lebanese army checkpoint and then climbed into vehicles sent by the Palestinian Red Crescent. The Lebanese army held many of them for interrogation, Kadi said.
...The mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement was reported to have called on its guerrillas inside the camp to leave as well.
...Fatah Islam group is believed to be made up of mostly foreign Sunni Muslim fighters, and Lebanon's Western-backed government has accused the group of trying, with Syria's backing, to launch a rebellion in the north of the country and destabilize Lebanon. Syria denies the allegations and has described Fatah Islam as a dangerous terrorist organization.
It is hard to know for sure. Some people say that they are a Syrian organization, other say they are al-Qaeda.
We do know that the leader of Fatah al-Islam is a Palestinian Arab, Shaker Absi.
We do know that they managed to get into these camps whose security is run by Fatah without much difficulty.
We do know that many of the PalArabs fleeing are being held by Lebanon on suspicion of being involved with Fatah al Islam.
It strains credulity to think that a couple of hundred Syrians and Saudi Arabians went to Lebanese camp hell-holes just to have a base from which to attack the Lebanese. It seems more logical that radical Palestinian Arabs went into the camps in order to recruit more people for their cause, which would indicate a majority as being Palestinian themselves.
The AP, however, will not even entertain such a notion. To even imply that Fatah al-Islam is a Palestinian Islamic terror group would reflect badly on all those good Palestinian Arabs who are the real heroes according to the mainstream media. So don't expect this to be a topic that will be investigated too thoroughly - much easier to blame Syria or Al-Qaeda, the known bad guys.