Simmering discontent in Nahr el-Bared

It is five years to the month that the siege of Nahr El Bared began near Tripoli, and while the guns have gone silent, the potential for renewed conflict involving Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps looms ever as large.  In conversations and interviews since with representatives from the different Palestinian factions in the camps — often in places where Kalashnikovs are stacked indiscreetly in the corner — the topic of Nahr El Bared has inevitably come up. The 2007 battle destroyed the camp, displaced tens of thousands and killed hundreds of Lebanese soldiers and mostly foreign Fatah Al Islam militants; it also represents for many Palestinians both their precarious position in Lebanon and the country’s careless disregard for their suffering. To the south, in Lebanon’s largest refugee camp, Ain Al Helweh, the precarious security conditions that resulted in the Nahr El Bared fighting are mirrored in many ways. In Ain Al