BEIRUT: Palestinian factions and civilians raised assault rifles and danced in the streets at refugee camps in Lebanon recently after Israeli settlers completed their pullout from their settlements in the Gaza Strip. Old women in long robes and covering their heads with traditional white head scarves, and children in militia garb, joined in the Arabic dabke dance to the tune of bagpipes.

Others distributed sweets to motorists and passers-by in the sprawling refuges camps in Lebanon.

“Mabrouk...Mabrouk (congratulation...congratulations),” shouted Lieutenant Colonel Maher Shabaitah who heads the mainstream Fatah movement’s office in Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in South Lebanon.

“We are not going to stop...The intifada will not stop. Today Gaza and after it the West Bank and all of Palestine. The intifada will not stop as long as a single Palestinian remains outside Palestine,” Shabaitah said. In a meeting held at the Amal Movement’s offices in the port city of Sidon, Lebanese parties and Palestinian factions in South Lebanon reiterated calls for consolidating unity between Palestinians in a bid to finalize the liberation process.

Participants in the meeting congratulated the Palestinian people, pledging to maintain the resistance until victory is achieved and the entire Arab territories are recovered from Israel.

They denounced the maritime, land and air embargo by the army of the ‘enemy’ that will be imposed on Gaza.

Participants also condemned ongoing pressure to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which consolidates US hegemony and control of the Security Council decision to serve US interests in the region.

Ain al-Hilweh is the largest of 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and has a population of 75,000. Almost all Palestinian factions have representative offices in the camp

Disarming the refugee camps is one of the demands of last fall’s Resolution 1559. Lebanon is host to nearly 350,000 Palestinian refugees, some of whom have lived in the camps since the establishment of an Israeli state in 1948. Both the Lebanese and Palestinians worry that agreements for an eventual settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict would leave refugees permanently living in the Lebanon camps.

Lebanese authorities are concerned a permanent Palestinian population could upset the country’s delicate sectarian balance on which the country’s political system is based.