Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction yesterday renewed warnings that its fighters would retaliate if Israeli forces approached refugee camps during their offensive in Lebanon. “If Israeli forces should approach the entrance of our camps, we will react with weapons,” Fatah’s Lebanon representative Sultan Abul Aynain said from the Rashidiyah camp, south of the port city of Tyre. Abul Aynain predicted some “very difficult” times this week as Israel intensifies its offensive before a diplomatic push to bring hostilities to an end. “Israel wants to achieve gains in very little time although it could not, since July 12, neutralise Hezbollah fighters and liberate the two captured soldiers,” he said.
The Israeli security cabinet gave orders early yesterday for a broadening of IsraelÂ’s ground offensive, launched after the two soldiers were seized in a deadly cross-border raid by the ShiÂ’ite militants of Hezbollah. A total of 828 people have died in the three-week-old offensive, according to an official toll.
Abul Aynain already warned that Palestinian fighters might join the conflict in a July 24 interview with satellite news channel Al-Arabiya. “None of us can be except at the centre of the battle if Israel invades south Lebanon,” he said at the time.