Update: From MEMRI.

So to recap:

• Fatah al-Islam announced a few days ago that its old leader, Shakir al-`Absi is either dead or in custody.
• The new leader of Fatah al-Islam is being “protected” by the Jihadi group, `Usbat al-Ansar, in the Ain Hilweh camp.
• `Usbat al-Ansar has declared that it is forbidden to attack the Lebanese Army “or any other army” and it is a duty to attack Jews in Palestine.  At the same time, it is negotiating the handover of the new leader of Fatah al-Islam to the Lebanese Army.
• There are threats against UNIFIL and its been told to stay away from Ain Hilweh.
• Fatah al-Islam has made sure that its web presence remains intact.  In the past, its website was where the group posted statements about its leaders and recent attacks.

There’s too little information here to predict what is going to happen but something is bubbling in the Ain.  Is `Usba going to attack UNIFIL to get cover for turning over the new head of Fatah al-Islam?  Or does Fatah al-Islam want to hit UNIFIL to fire up its supporters and pressure `Usba not to hand its leader over?  Or is none of this related at all?  Come on you Lebanon watchers, let’s hear some theories.  Use the cover of anonymity and put forward some bold predictions.

Shakir al-`Absi, the fugitive leader of Fatah al-Islam, has issued his second audio statement since the defeat of his organization at the hands of the Lebanese Army last year. In it, he claims that the U.S. knows that it cannot directly break the “power” (shawka–a favorite Jihadi term) of the Sunnis in the Middle East, so it is using proxies to achieve the same result. This is particularly the case in Lebanon. Firstly, the U.S. is working through Sunni proxies to take control of the state’s material and media resources. Secondly, it is deliberately empowering Iran and its rejectionist allies in the region. (“Rejectionists” is a pejorative term used for Twelver Shia, who reject the first three caliphs).

`Absi goes on to say that the Sunnis of Lebanon have no one to fight for them. Hezbollah is not serious about fighting Jews; they just want control of Lebanon. And the Lebanese Army abandoned the Sunnis when Hezbollah militiamen swept into their neighborhoods in May. This, despite the fact that these same Sunnis had supported the army’s crackdown on Fatah al-Islam last year.

Toward the end of his audio statement, `Absi addresses the “heroes of Islam” in northern and southern Lebanon and the “lions of Islam” in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon:

The time of separation has come. Now you will find the lions of monotheism suddenly attacking the enemies of God, no matter who they are–Jew, Christian, hateful rejectionist [Shia], or apostate.

He also menacingly warns: “The car bombs of Iraq and the brigades of martyrdom seekers are not far from the enemies of God, wherever they are.”

1. There was an explosion at the intelligence headquarters of the Lebanese Army at Abdeh in northern Lebanon.
2. The army killed a Palestinian suicide bomber at a military checkpoint outside the Ayn Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon.

The first incident has been claimed by Fatah al-Islam, the Lebanese Jihadi group that was crushed by the Lebanese Army in the nearby Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp last summer. The second incident does not seem to have made news yet in the English-language media, but it has received coverage in the Arabic press.  That the attacks came within hours of each other, one in the far north, the other in the far south, suggests coordination.

Although Jannat covers most of the open conflict zones in each issue, it focuses heavily on the Palestinian territories, which means that’s where its producers likely live (Gaza would be a good bet).  Since it is critical of Hamas and hateful toward Hezbollah, it’s also safe to assume that its producers are Jihadi-Salafis of some sort.  Jihadis are trying to gain greater visibility in Gaza, but it has been tough given Hamas’s monopoly on Sunni Islamist violence there.

The headline story in this issue is the Shia march from Iran to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon to the Gulf and finally to Yemen (which seems pretty circuitous).  The headline screams that Hezbollah is appropriating Sunni Beirut and that the extermination of Fatah al-Islam (a Lebanese Jihadi group which rebelled against the government last summer) has paved the way for Hezbollah’s control of Lebanon.