The Lebanese authorities are erecting a wall around the biggest Palestinian camp in the country, Ain al-Hilweh, which is home to more than 120,000 people, in what residents have likened to Israel’s separation wall at a time when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump vowed to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.
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Munir Maqdah, the camp's head of the Joint Palestinian Security Forces, told Sky News Arabia that “the wall and (watchtowers) are being built for security concerns, which we accepted.”
Palestinian factions maintain security and other limited administrative tasks. However, while the Palestinian factions are accepting the wall, it seems that it was part of Lebanon’s conditions for deescalating the fighting around the camp in return for the factions handing over the wanted individuals.
The last few months have seen intense confrontations between wanted residents of the camp and the Lebanese Army. Lebanon has no authority inside the perimeters of Palestinian refugee camps and therefore its army and police can not enter them.
“Four towers will be constructed," Abu Ahmad Faysal, a Hamas official from Ain al-Hilweh told the local newspaper Daily Star. "The construction of the wall aims to decrease the confrontation between (the camp's) inhabitants and the army."
A Facebook group which covers news from the camp, “Aismat Shatat Ain Al Helwe” – Arabic for “Capital of diaspora Ain al-Hilweh” – shared photos of the construction of the wall outside of the camp Saturday.
“Wall of shame,” the Facebook post read. “This picture is not in occupied Palestine, and the company building it is not Zionist. This is a picture of the wall of shame, the racial separation wall that the Lebanese government has been building around Ain al-Hilweh camp.
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Many residents of the refugee camp also took to Twitter to slam the wall and draw similarities between it and the one Israel built around parts of the occupied West Bank on Palestinian lands.
The Lebanese wall would take up to 15 months to complete, according to the Daily Star. Officials from the Lebanese Army said that the watch towers would help monitor the camp and deter militants from hiding in the camp.
Several extremist militants operating in the country and in neighboring Syria have sought refuge in the camp to take advantage of the security vacuum in the camp and to avoid capture by Lebanese authorities.
In September, Islamic State group's top commander in Lebanon, Imad Yassin, was arrested at his hideout in an overnight raid on the camp.