Lebanon said that some Palestinian factions began handing over weapons held in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut to the Lebanese army on Thursday, an initial step in implementing a plan officials announced three months earlier for removing arms from the camps.

It was a modest first step. One pickup left the Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut’s southern suburbs loaded with light weapons packed in bags. The butts of machine guns could be seen protruding from some of the sacks.

An AFP photographer saw a truck filled with weapons and ammunition being transported from the camp to a nearby parking lot, where Lebanese army vehicles and personnel were deployed to inspect the cargo.

The step of removing weapons from the camps was seen as a precursor to the much more difficult step of disarming Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah, which last year fought a bruising war with Israel that ended in a ceasefire in November. Hezbollah has been under domestic and international pressure since then to give up its remaining arsenal, which it has so far refused to do.

The decision to remove weapons from the Palestinian camps was announced in May during a visit by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Lebanon, during which he and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun announced that arms would be consolidated under the authority of the Lebanese government.

It was unclear if factions other than Abbas’s Fatah movement would abide by the decision.

משאית עם נשק מועברת לידי הצבא הלבנוני במחנה הפליטים הפלסטיני בורג' אל-בראג'נה. לפי הצהרות של פלסטינים מוקדם יותר – מה שנמסר שם כפעימה ראשונה זה נשק בינוני וכבד (ולא קל) ומה שיימסר בכללי זה רק הנשק "הבלתי חוקי". מהתרשמותי אם זה המודל לפירוק חיזבאללה זה........

© The Times of Israel