Victory Or Cease Fire?

The Lebanese media is filled with news about the Army’s “upcoming victory” against Fateh Al Islam. Was that just a face-saving cover for a pragmatic deal that would end up deporting the fighters and giving back control to the Palestinian factions?

To many of us Army supporters, we can’t help getting all cheesy when we see pictures like the above (from Annahar, H/T AKais) and read headlines like “Army To declare victory soon”, but are we being duped? Did the Army really “crush” Fateh Al Islam?

Aljazeera’s fly in the ointment:

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Translation mine:

Aljazeera’s Lebanon correspondent reported that the initiative of the Palestine’s Association Of Scholars to end the fightings in Naher Al Bared reached its final stages, and it estimates reaching a ceasefire by tomorrow evening.

The Correspondent said that the agreement involves a ceasefire from Fateh Al Islam’s part and its agreeing to deport its Arab fighters outside of Lebanon and handing in their weapons to a Palestinian faction thought to be the Islamic Jihad.

She pointed out that the agreement also includes the deployment of Palestinian security forces in the old camp and allowing explosives experts to defuse the bombs in the camps before the refugees can come back.

Although this seems short of a complete victory, it is not as bad is it sounds on Aljazeera, which after all, has its strong biases. For example, Instead of writing “handing all the Lebanese terrorist members to the Army”, Aljazeera chose to write “deporting Arab fighters outside of Lebanon.”

The Army has still not officially approved the initiative, but at the same time, it didn’t post its usually prompt strong rebuttal of “any solution that does not involve the complete surrender of the militants” on its website.

Another question begs to be asked: Will the deported fighters be hosted by countries like Qatar, or will they end up in their country of origin’s legal systems?

I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

**update**

Aljazeera: The Lebanese Army’s leadership said that the only way to stop fighting is the handing over of the leaders of Fateh Al Islam