Thousands Mourn Slain PLO Official in Lebanon
Members of rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas turned out in their thousands on Wednesday for the funeral in Beirut of a top Palestine Liberation Organization official killed in a bombing.
Kamal Medhat, the PLO”s number two in Lebanon, died in Monday”s roadside bombing outside the Mieh Mieh refugee camp in southern Lebanon along with three other people, including two of his bodyguards.
The coffin of Medhat and the other three victims, draped in Palestinian flags, were carried about three kilometers (less than two miles) through the streets of Beirut from Imam Ali mosque to the Palestinian "martyrs cemetery."
PLO guards marched in front of the thousands-strong procession chanting revolutionary songs while some in the cortege carried photographs of the four victims and others waved Palestinian, Fatah and Hamas flags.
During the procession, the PLO representative in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, walked side by side with Hamas officials.
Medhat was leading efforts to end the rift between Fatah — the faction led by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas — and the Hamas movement as well as several other Islamist groups operating in some of the 12 camps housing Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
Medhat, 58, was also a former aide to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and a former intelligence chief for Fatah in Lebanon.
Lebanese newspapers said the killing could be a "settling of scores" between Fatah and Hamas.
Top PLO official Kamal Medhat was likely the victim of inter-Palestinian feud, the daily As Safir reported Wednesday.
It quoted a security source as saying that initial findings show that the bomb was Palestinian-made that was likely prepared at the refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh in southern Lebanon.
The source said Medhat was "definitely" the victim of a clear split within mainstream Fatah ranks, particularly since new arrangements for the governance of Fatah were in the works to separate management from the military.
As Safir said Sultan Abul Aynein was doomed to be in charge of management while Kamal Medhat would head Fatah”s military wing.
The daily also quoted a senior Lebanese security official as warning against turning Ain el-Hilweh into another Nahr el-Bared in a bid to torpedo upcoming Lebanese parliamentary elections.
Fatah spokesman in the West Bank Fahmi al-Zaarir said the group”s leader in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, was with Medhat on the visit to Miyeh Miyeh refugee camp but was not hurt since he left the camp a few hours earlier. It was not immediately known if Zaki might have been the target.
No one has claimed responsibility for the roadside bomb which killed Medhat, deputy of Palestine Liberation Organization representative in Lebanon Zaki, near Miyeh Miyeh in southern Lebanon on Monday. Three other people, including two of his bodyguards, were also killed in the midday blast.
There have been power struggles between competing factions, but Zaarir said
Abul Aynein, a senior Fatah commander in Lebanon, has warned that the bombing could be the beginning of a "cycle" to target other Fatah officials in Lebanon.
Osama Hamdan, Lebanon”s representative of the rival militant Hamas group, said Medhat had played "a major role" in efforts to unify rival Palestinian factions, especially between Fatah and Hamas.
Several rounds of talks between rivals Fatah and Hamas mediated by Egypt broke down last week without a deal on a national unity government.
A government source on Tuesday was quoted as saying that Medhat”s assassination was a "warning" to Lebanese leaders.
According to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), between 350,000 and 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon — a country of more than four million inhabitants — most of them living in the camps.
Other estimates put the number of refugees at 200,000 to 250,000 as UNRWA does not strike off its lists the names of those who emigrate.