The situation is made more complex with the rise of other groups such as the Jund al-Sham which is made up of a few dozen Palestinian and Lebanese militants, has sided with Fatah al-Islam, though they do not appear to have organizational links. Its fighters attacked the army just hours after a Fatah al-Islam commander named Abu Riyadh, who had previously belonged to Jund al-Sham, was killed in Nahr al-Bared.

There are 12 other Palestinian camps in Lebanon and they house 400,000 refugees who are waiting to have the chance to go back to Palestine. They supported the Fatah Party of President Mahmoud Abbas during the time of Yasser Arafat but in the long run, they shifted their support to the Hamas. More armed groups are willing to join the Fatah Al-Islam and they will do so in the eventuality of a failure by the Lebanese army to crush the FAI completely.

Most of the groups willing to take up arms in Lebanon are those who follow the principles of the Salafi group but there are also those who have adopted the Ikhwan ul Muslimeen (Brotherhood) ideology. They are slowly joining the fight for the establishment of a caliphate in Lebanon, with the aim of ousting the pro-US regime of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and establishing a pan-Islamic government in the parts of the country.

The groups have the division of Lebanon in mind since the Hizbullah has control of the Southern parts of the country and parts of Beirut. These groups, including the FAI, do not have short term agenda’s and they are infiltrating Lebanon with the aim of establishing a ‘Sunni’ belt in the country to counter the existing Shi’a belt. They are not pro-Syrian as Syria is a supporter of the Hizbullah and they are surely not pro-Iran, which is Shi’a state.

Major news organizations, including Al-Jazeera TV and the BBC or the American networks are focusing on the bombings and the actions by the Lebanese army. They are also offering words of praise for the supposed brave Lebanese soldiers who are (again) supposedly fighting a supposedly (once again) radical Islamic group that is supposedly (sic) spreading terrorism.

Now that we have learned that the Lebanese army is attacking the FAI based on assumptions and suppositions, the most interesting thing is to know why this is happening and what would be the end result of the sudden surge in Lebanon’s interest in dealing with such groups. It must be said that the Lebanese army was given extensive military help by the US and it is also possible that Jewish coordinators are on the ground helping the Lebanese army in this attack on the Nahr al-Bared camp.

There has been exchanges of logistics and additional materials handed over to the Lebanese army by the Americans, which proves that the current government of Fouad Siniora is not only pro-American but may have gained significantly in the murder of Rafick Hariri, the murdered Lebanese Prime Minister.

The FAI is a salafi group that shares the same theologies as the Osama Bin Laden group. They are not like many other groups that are being formed in the Palestinian camps across Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, since they are composed mostly of Islamic fighters who had a stint in Iraq. These fighters are from Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and some of them are Palestinians.

The ideology of Fatah Al-Islam is different from that of groups like Hamas or the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Both these movements are nationalistic in their approach and aspirations, fighting for the lost land of Palestinians while the FAI and other groups that could be affiliated to it in the future obeys a more ‘globalist’ Islamic view of salvaging the Bait-ul-Maqdis (Jerusalem) – which is the third holy city of Islam – from the hands of the Jews.

After years of fighting for their lost homes, the Palestinians have been led to believe that the struggle is purely Palestinian and has nothing to do with Islam or other Muslims. The problem in this theory that has been spread by the new Hamas leaders too when they decided to follow the PLO in this endeavor, is they needed the support of the Arab and Muslim world to help their political struggle reach where it is today.

This support never came without any attached conditions and the Palestinians will learn to accept this and they will have to decide whether to support the FAI or other similar groups with a global view of the Palestinian conflict or pursue the already failed nationalistic war. To reject the FAI would simply mean the adoption of the unaccomplished struggle of Yasser Arafat the PLO Leader and first President of the Palestinian Authority (PA). It will lead to no where and the FAI along with other groups that supports the OBL ideology, are very much aware of.

While the Hamas is proving that it fought its way to dislodge the Fatah from power in Palestine to pursue the same nationalistic agenda like the PLO, its popularity is bound to suffer in the long run. Its attempt to leverage its international image with a possible ‘cease fire’ with Israel will undermine its authority. The Palestinian people will also learn that Israel will never keep its word in such ‘cease fires’ and that sooner or later it will continue its massacre of the Palestinians and will not stop undermining and destroying the Palestinian people’s economy.

The Hamas has dislodged the Fatah to have a fairer share of the huge treasury (in forms of aids, donor funds and Quartet financial support) that is at stake when one runs the PA and the Palestine Parliament. The PA is run by the Fatah (which is different from the Fatah Al-Islam) while the parliament is run by the Hamas.

The people of Palestine will realize that they supported the Fatah in the past only to be betrayed by the corruption that raged during its rule over the ‘freed’ territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Since the creation of the PA, the Palestinians enjoyed a brief moment of peace and development while Arafat was the PA President.

Things deteriorated after the Israeli army started its military campaign of destruction and massive arrests and murders in the Gaza and the West Bank. The same people of Palestine, in the camps across Lebanon and in the freed territories, will also realize that they only managed to lift Hamas to greater political role only to be betrayed by the party after its deal with the Fatah, deal signed in February this year in Saudi Arabia. The Hamas is the group that promoted an all out war against Israel and today they are floating the idea of a cease fire with the Jewish state. Why are they in such a hurry now to call for a cease fire after attacking Israel with rockets from Gaza? The rise of the FAI – which sounds the bell of support for OBL – is not going to favor the Hamas in its political overdrive to neutralize its own military objectives.