SIDON, Lebanon: Palestinian officials in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp are working hard to ensure that the multitude of rival factions and groups remain isolated from the increasingly bloody upheaval roiling Syria.

Ain al-Hilweh hosts numerous factions, some secular, some Islamist, some backed by the regime of Bashar Assad and others supporting the opposition sworn to unseat the Syrian president. Keeping a lid on boiling tensions and rivalries within the turbulent camp is a full-time and hands-on task for Ain al-Hilweh’s leadership.

“We’re working on a unified stance on Syria to prevent problems from emerging,” said Mounir al-Maqdah, a veteran Fatah commander in Ain al-Hilweh. “What is happening in Syria is an internal question for Syria. We treat it the same as we treat Lebanon: we don’t want to get involved.”

However, at least one group represented in Ain al-Hilweh has openly championed the Syrian opposition. The Sunni Islamist group, Hizb u- Tahrir, which has organized rallies in Tripoli in support of the Syrian uprising, has distributed leaflets around the camp praising the Syrian opposition. That inevitably drew sharp reactions from the pro-Damascus factions.

“All the Palestinian factions denied Hizb ut-Tahrir’s declaration and said they don’t want to meddle in Syrian affairs. Hizb ut-Tahrir are a group of individuals; they don’t have a military presence in the camp,” said Hajj Maher Oueid, the deputy leader of the Ansarallah faction in Ain al-Hilweh.

Also of potential concern to the Palestinians in Ain al-Hilweh is the resurgence of sectarian tensions in Sidon between Sunnis and Shiites. A spate of arson attacks against shops and vehicles and a row over an alleged insult toward Aisha, the Prophet Mohammad’s wife, has aggravated local communal relations that have never recovered from the May 2008 clashes between factions belonging to March 14 and March 8.

Ain al-Hilweh, with its militias and weapons, has been described as the “fortress” for Sunni Sidon and the camp’s leadership is wary of being dragged into Lebanese domestic spats.

“Any fitna here is in the interests of Israel,” Maqdah said, while acknowledging that he was worried that the Palestinians could be used to intensify sectarian problems.

Recent press reports have claimed an increase in pro-Syrian militants in the Palestinian camps, the inference being that they could be exploited to destabilize the security situation in Lebanon. Specifically, it has been claimed that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and As-Saiqa, both Damascus-backed Palestinian groups, have increased their personnel in recent weeks in Ain al-Hilweh, Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut and the Badawi camp in Tripoli.

But officials in Ain al-Hilweh and Burj al-Barajneh denied that either group had reinforced its positions, an assertion backed by independent sources in both camps. The PFLP-GC remains active in Lebanon and has three military bases in the Bekaa and a fourth at Naameh, 9 kilometers south of Beirut. But As-Saiqa has all but vanished since the end of the civil war, maintaining only a small presence in some camps. As-Saiqa’s influence declined even more after Syria disengaged from Lebanon in April 2005 in the wake of Rafik Hariri’s assassination.

“Some people supported As-Saiqa in the camp before 2005 because they had benefits from the Syrians. But generally, As-Saiqa couldn’t convince many people to join because they were associated with Syrian intelligence rather than as a Palestinian faction,” said a politically independent NGO activist in Ain al-Hilweh.

Palestinian refugees – those living in Ain al-Hilweh in particular – are well used to the camps being accused as breeding grounds for militants of all hues and the perpetrators of the periodic unclaimed attacks and security incidents that bedevil Lebanon. It is certainly true that Al-Qaeda-inspired militants exist in Ain al-Hilweh as do more mundane mercenary elements willing to launch a rocket into Israel if the price is right. Sources in the camp say that the Sunni jihadist Jund ash-Sham has regrouped lately, although there appears to be some overlap with Fatah al-Islam, which shares similar ideology. One source said that the two groups collectively number about 120 people, with 50 of them belonging to Jund ash-Sham. Both fall under the political cover of Osbat al-Ansar, a jihadist group that has moderated its profile since the three-month battle between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Army in the Nahr al-Bared camp in 2007.

Whether or not these group members are responsible for the recent attacks against UNIFIL, including Friday’s bombing near Burj Shemali in the Tyre district which left five French peacekeepers wounded, is hard to gauge. But Palestinian leaders in Ain al-Hilweh are quick to dismiss such allegations.

“UNIFIL is a red line and the Palestinians do not want to meddle in local affairs,” said Ansarallah’s Oueid.

But despite the efforts of the Palestinian leadership, sporadic violence is a near daily occurrence in a camp that crams some 70,000 people into a space barely a square kilometer in size. The conversation with Maqdah gradually fizzled out as he began receiving a flurry of urgent calls on his cellphone.

“There’s been a shooting,” he said with an apologetic smile and slight shrug of the shoulders.

Uday Hammoud, a bodyguard to Brigadier General Sobhi Abu Arab, Fatah’s military commander, was shot and wounded by a member of Jund ash-Sham. Within minutes, schools were closed and schoolchildren hurried home along the cramped streets which rapidly filled with grim-faced gunmen. Maqdah accompanied by two armed bodyguards sauntered out of his headquarters, known locally as the “White House,” to resolve this latest crisis.