According to Hazim Amin, a reporter for the al-Hayat newspaper and an expert on al Qaeda ideology, Lebanon is regarded as a jihadist recruiting ground through groups such as Asbat and Jund. Some Lebanese authorities, citing several recently uncovered plots with al Qaeda-type characteristics, have grown concerned about the ramifications of this for Lebanese security. One military official who dealt with these groups regularly says that Jund al-Sham and Asbat al-Ansar are "mostly the same group and are very, very dangerous men." "[There are] less than 100 Jundis, 300 to 400 Asbat al-Ansar. ... They are tied directly to al Qaeda," he explains. "There is no hierarchy to al Qaeda, though; it's like a McDonald's. ... Everyone wants their own franchise. But they are the same, the same very dangerous mentality."

It would be difficult for Lebanese authorities to crack down, even if so inclined, because of the dense population of the camp and the lack of heavy weaponry in the Lebanese Army. "The Lebanese Army cannot go inside the camp to fight them; it would be a massacre," he concludes.

Camp powerbroker. The person the Lebanese would rely on to help contain these groups is the closest thing to a powerbroker in the camp, Munir al-Maqdah. He leads a breakaway faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization that rejected the 1990s peace agreements with Israel but maintains good relations with most of the different groups in the camp. A gunman at age 11 for Yasser Arafat's Fatah wing of the PLO, Maqdah later commanded Arafat's personal security detail during the Lebanese civil war, was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia for plotting attacks on Israelis in Jordan, and is allegedly implicated in a 2001 assassination plot against then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Now 46, he controls the strongest militia in Ain al-Hilweh.

But he has little problem with the idea of people from the camp going to fight in Iraq. In fact, he sent about 300 of his own men to fight in Iraq at the start of the war. "An Arab land is occupied," he says of Iraq, sitting in the garden of his home in the camp. "As Palestinians we understand this [idea of occupation], that it is the duty of every Arab who can to resist this or any occupation."

Today, he does not think it necessary to send more men to Iraq because the Iraqi insurgency doesn't need the help--and he wants to keep his men focused on the traditional foe, Israel. But many obstacles block the way to Israel, just a few dozen miles south of here--the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah militia, a high-tech fence, and, finally, the Israeli Army. Iraq, in contrast, can be reached by transiting Syria, perhaps with the help of a small bribe to border guards. "When crossing Syria, nobody but God knows what will happen. Some days it is easy; other days, everyone is arrested. You can never predict," says Jalil, who claims to have done it himself without incident and to know a dozen or so others who have as well. Most of them made it, he says, but one ended up in a Syrian jail for eight months.

So, American forces in Iraq become, almost by default, a proxy target for some Palestinian and Lebanese fighters. Suhail Natour, a human-rights lawyer and a former Palestinian militant, likens the conditions in the camps of Lebanon to a volcano: "If there's no way for the lava to go out, it will go where it can ... to Iraq."