‘We are with them’: support for Hamas grows among Palestinians in Lebanon

The red inverted triangle is everywhere – stencilled on walls, sprayed on store shutters, a constant theme guiding visitors through the narrow alleyways that dissect the Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut.

Appearing initially in combat videos released by Hamas in which its fighters target Israeli tanks in Gaza, the newfound ubiquity of the logo in the camp 170 miles (270km) away signals a shift in opinion in favour of armed struggle.

“We feel pride and are more conscious about the cause,” said Nihaya Ayman Ibrahim, a 25-year-old artist whose murals adorn the camp’s walls. One depicts parachuters, reminiscent of Hamas militants descending into Israel to carry out its deadly attack on 7 October. Another portrays Hamas’s military spokesperson, Abu Obeida, his face draped in a keffiyeh.

“We are with them,” Ibrahim said. “Despite everything that happened in Gaza, despite all the victims.”

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have languished in Lebanon’s refugee camps for decades – stateless, marginalised by their host communities and with no prospects for the future.

Until recently, the walls of the camp’s dilapidated buildings bore faded graffiti, a testament to a cause gone stale. But Hamas’s attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza have revived aspirations for Palestinian statehood and the dream to return to a homeland that has existed only in distant memories of an older generation.

“It used to be that only the elderly who had been displaced spoke about Palestine,” said Ibrahim, who was born in the camp as part of a generation that had turned away from politics to focus on scraping a living.

Now, her generation has been galvanised like never before. “You have young boys, 10- to 15-year-olds, who are talking about what’s happening in Palestine,” she said.

The war has consumed daily life in the camps. On a recent visit to Burj al-Barajneh, boys armed with plastic machine guns played war, running through crowded streets and ducking behind corners painted with the red triangle. Adults sat in coffee shop playing cards, watching live coverage of the war in Gaza.

Tensions have also vastly increased on the Israel-Lebanon border, with Israeli forces exchanging near-daily fire with the Lebanese paramilitary group, Hezbollah.

Western countries have designated Hamas a terrorist organisation – but Palestinians tend to call it the “resistance”, a loose grouping of armed factions seen as waging a legitimate struggle against Israeli occupation. The events of 7 October are not regarded an act of terrorism but an inspiring prison break. Symbols such as the red triangle, the parachuters and Obeida have been emblazoned on pins, T-shirts and coffee mugs and absorbed into popular culture, their appeal extending well beyond Palestinian communities.

Ibrahim was quick to clarify that the support for the “resistance” was “moral” and not political. While Obeida’s ubiquitous picture aims to show solidarity with fighters on the ground, notably absent are images of Hamas’s political leaders, who are based in Qatar and Lebanon.

“The people differentiate very well between Hamas’s military wing and the political bureau,” said Marie Kortam, a researcher at the French Institute of the Near East, adding that the temporary surge in support does not necessarily translate into lasting change in political affiliations.

Palestinians in the camps have historically sided with Hamas’s rival, Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority as well as the camps in Lebanon and whose secular orientation tends to be more palatable than Hamas’s Islamist doctrine.

But Fatah has faced a steady decline in legitimacy amid longstanding accusations of corruption and its failure to realise the promises of the 1993 Oslo accords.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon complain that Fatah has not improved living conditions or helped secure basic rights, such as the ability to work or own property.

The Palestinian Authority allocates $15m a month for the Lebanese camps, but much of it is spent on fuelling Fatah’s patronage networks rather than providing services to refugees, an official says.

The forlorn conditions in the camps, coupled with Israel’s scorched earth military campaign in Gaza, have offered fertile ground for Hamas to chip away at Fatah’s status as the guardian of the Palestinian cause. “This was an excellent opportunity for Hamas to create a popular base in the camps,” said Kortam.

Hamas has kept recruitment under wraps to avoid alienating the Lebanese government or turning the camps into targets for Israeli bombardment. But behind the scenes, the group has capitalised on the youth’s newfound zeal.

In the southern city of Saida, a local Hamas official said “hundreds” of youths had approached him in recent months, ready to take up arms. “They wanted us to give them weapons so they can go to Palestine from southern Lebanon, so they can fight the Zionist entity after they saw the massacres being committed,” said Hassan Shanaa.

Saida is home to Ain al-Hilweh, the largest refugee camp in Lebanon. About 120,000 Palestinians are crammed into less than half a square kilometre of land. When the war in Gaza broke out, there was “a general mobilisation” in the camp, one Hamas fighter said, with young men lining up to join Hamas’s ranks. He did not want to be named because of the repercussions for speaking to media outside Hamas’s chain of command.

“They teach us about weapons, how to take them apart and put them together,” said a recruit who joined after 7 October, feeling that armed resistance was the only way forward. “It would be an honour to go fight.”

Hamas’s recruitment process can take years. New joiners start with religious instruction and are vetted in several stages. Military training takes place outside the camps in concert with Hezbollah.

Mobilisation in the camps risks igniting a backlash in Lebanon, where Palestinians were part of the civil war, fighting alongside Muslim parties against rightwing Christian groups allied with Israel. The refugees’ integration into Lebanese society remains controversial as it risks altering the balance of power in Lebanon’s sectarian system of government.

The Lebanese government has tried to curb recruitment. “We’ve had several discussions with Hamas here in Lebanon to stop,” said Bassel Al Hassan, the chair of the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee. “We’ve said that we have our sovereignty and also we have the burden of implications on the Lebanese situation.”

But as long as Israel’s war in Gaza rages on, Al Hassan expects recruitment to continue. “The suffering is overwhelming and the public opinion among the Palestinian people is focused on this more than any other issue,” he said.