We are victims again in Lebanon, Palestinians say

MAR ELIAS CAMP, Lebanon, May 23 (Reuters) Hassan Abdel Ghani remembers evacuating wounded Palestinians from camps bombed by Lebanese militia in the civil war two decades ago.

Footage of his compatriots fleeing a camp in northern Lebanon after being shelled had the former medic shaking his head in despair today at this refugee camp in Beirut.

''Palestinians have always been the weakest link in Lebanon, the scapegoat for the country's problems,'' said Abdel Ghani.

The latest episode is all too familiar for thousands of Palestinians who fled from their land in Galilee to Lebanon when Israel was created in 1948.

The camps became a regular target of Israeli, Syrian and Lebanese militias as they fought for control of Lebanon. This week the Nahr al-Bared camp was shelled by the Lebanese army in fighting with an Islamist militia.

''Bombing a whole camp in the name of rooting out a few fighters is another way of subjugating Palestinians into accepting whatever schemes the world has for us,'' Abdel Ghani said.

The Lebanese army is trying to crush Fatah al-Islam, a militant group led by a Palestinian but with little or no support among Lebanon's Palestinian refugee population of 400,000. Dozens of people have died in three days of fighting.

''I understand that the need to deal a blow to extremists and that they must be stopped. But the way the army bombed the camp could only mean it wants the Palestinians to sink into more misery,'' said Souad Haj Hassan, a mother of three children.

REFUGEES FROM CAMPS Palestinians showed little sympathy for Fatah al-Islam, which members of the governing coalition say is a tool of Syrian intelligence. Syria denies any link with the group.

Paralysed by a political crisis and facing stiff opposition from factions including Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah, the Lebanese government is trying to show it still has muscle, Palestinians said.

''The state has to prove it's tough, and as always it's the Palestinians who pay,'' said Ali Iskandar, who moved into Mar Elias after Lebanese Christian militia destroyed Tal al-Zaatar, a camp just north of Beirut, where he lived in the 1970s.

Mar Elias, a short walk from the plush Verdun shopping district, was protected by a militia led by Druze leader Walid Jumblatt during the 1975-1990 civil war.

It was spared much of the carnage that swept the nearby Sabra and Shatila camps, where members of the Christian Israeli-backed Lebanese Forces militia massacred Palestinians in 1982.

''I can't help thinking that the refugees we see fleeing on television will end up like me, looking for another refugee camp to live in,'' Iskandar said.

Souheil El-Natour, a Palestinian who heads the Human Development Centre at Mar Elias, said Palestinians regarded the bombardment of Nahr al-Bared as targeting the whole refugee community in Lebanon.

''The army succeeded in showing that there are no red lines when it comes to Palestinian lives,'' he said.

REUTERS RJ KN1937