Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (left) with his Lebanese counterpart, Joseph Aoun, at the Baabda Palace on May 21, 2025. (Credit: presidency's X account.)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Beirut on Wednesday for an official visit focused on the issue of disarming Palestinian camps, as the Lebanese government aims to extend its authority over the entire national territory.
This is Abbas's first official visit to Lebanon since 2017, which hosts about 220,000 Palestinian refugees living in overcrowded camps escaping the control of Lebanese authorities. He began his discussions with a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, according to official media.
"The issue of Palestinian weapons in the camps will be one of the topics of discussion" during the visit, said Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), who is accompanying Abbas, to AFP.
A Lebanese government official told AFP on Wednesday that Abbas would discuss "the establishment of a mechanism to collect weapons and remove them from the camps." Under a tacit agreement, security in the refugee camps is provided by Palestinian factions, including Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, the Islamist movement Hamas, and other Palestinian armed groups.
When asked by AFP, a Hamas official in Lebanon, Ali Barakeh, called for a "comprehensive approach" to the issue of the Palestinian presence in Lebanon, which should not be "limited to the issue of weapons or security." "We respect Lebanon's sovereignty, security, and stability, but at the same time, we demand the guarantee of civil and human rights" for Palestinians, to whom Lebanon notably prohibits the practice of dozens of professions, he said.
In an interview given on Sunday evening to the Egyptian channel "ON TV," President Aoun stressed that only the state should have control over "the monopoly of arms." He announced that the Lebanese Army had dismantled six training camps of Palestinian organizations located outside the refugee camps.
The Lebanese authorities have committed to controlling the entire territory since the ceasefire in November between the pro-Iran Hezbollah and Israel, following over a year of hostilities, including two months of open conflict on the margins of the war in Gaza. The Lebanese Army has deployed in southern Lebanon and is working to dismantle the military infrastructure of this Lebanese formation, the only one to have kept its weapons after the end of the civil war in 1990 but emerged very weakened from the confrontation with Israel.
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