The disarmament of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon will begin next month based on an accord with visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a Lebanese government official told AFP on Friday.
The Lebanese and Palestinian sides agreed on starting a plan “to remove weapons from the camps, beginning mid-June in the Beirut camps, and other camps will follow,” the source told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to brief the media.
By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army stays out of the Palestinian camps — where Abbas’s Fatah movement, the Hamas terror group, and other armed groups are present — and leaves the factions to handle security.
Abbas has been in Beirut since Wednesday for talks on disarming the Palestinian refugee camps as Lebanon seeks to impose its authority on all its territory.
The deal came during the first meeting of a joint Lebanese-Palestinian committee announced Wednesday to follow up on the situation in the camps.
The meeting was also attended by Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.
This handout picture released by the Palestinian Authority’s Press Office (PPO) shows President Mahmud Abbas (R) meeting with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in Beirut on May 22, 2025. (PPO Handout / AFP)
A statement from the committee released by the premier’s office said it agreed to “launch the process of handing over weapons according to a specific timetable, accompanied by practical steps to bolster the economic and social rights of Palestinian refugees.”
Lebanon hosts about 222,000 Palestinians who are considered refugees, according to the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, many living in 12 overcrowded official camps.
Most are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their land during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. Unlike any other refugees in the world, the UN confers refugee status to all descendants of those displaced by that war, causing their numbers to balloon over time.
They are prohibited by the Lebanese state from working in many professional jobs, have few legal protections, and are not allowed to own property.
A woman walks past a wall poster depicting Abu Obaida, the spokesman for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas terror group, at the Burj al Barajneh camp for Palestinian refugees in Beirut’s southern suburbs on May 20, 2025. (Joseph EID / AFP)
Hamas claimed multiple attacks on Israel from Lebanon during more than a year of hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah terror group, which erupted when the latter terror group began attacking northern Israel a day after the Hamas-led invasion and massacre in the south on October 7, 2023.
The fighting on the northern border was brought to a halt by a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon in late November 2024.
In addition to confiscating Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure in the wake of the ceasefire, the Lebanese army was reported earlier this month to have seized 800 rockets from the Al-Beddawi Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
Earlier this year, the army also detained a number of Palestinians who were involved in firing rockets in two separate attacks toward Israel in late March.
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