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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/24/world/middleeast/palestinian-refugees-hamas-lebanon.html
Palestinians Exhilarated by Hamas's Ongoing War with Israel
(New York Times) Maria Abi-Habib - In Ein al-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest community of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, the mood is nothing but exuberant. Recruitment for Hamas and its Qassam Brigades is way up across Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee communities, according to Hamas and Lebanese officials. Hundreds of new recruits have joined in recent months, exhilarated by Hamas's ongoing war with Israel. Posters everywhere feature Qassam Brigades' spokesman Abu Ubaida imploring residents to "fight on the path of God." In Gaza, many people have soured on Hamas. But elsewhere, Hamas's willingness to combat Israel has won new adherents. Their enlistment in Ein al-Hilweh doesn't affect the fight in Gaza because getting into the territory is prohibitively hard. Recruits typically remain in the community, and sometimes approach Lebanon's southern border to launch rockets into Israel. Photos of Yasir Arafat, the once wildly popular head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, were noticeably scarce and faded throughout Ein al-Hilweh. Photos of his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, were even scarcer.