Palestinian refugees in Lebanon Sunday staged a day of mourning for the 44th anniversary of the "Naksa", or Israel's defeat of Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Lebanese and Palestinian activists had planned to protest at the border with Israel but Lebanon's army banned any gatherings at the frontier, fearing a repeat of last month's violence on the anniversary of Israel's 1948 creation.
On May 15, clashes between protesters and Israeli soldiers left six dead on the Lebanese border and four more in the Golan Heights at the ceasefire line between Syria and the Jewish state.
Twenty protesters on Sunday in the keffiyeh Arab headdress tried to stage a rally in the Lebanese southern border town of Adeisseh, facing the Israeli kibbutz of Misgav Am, but were quickly dispersed by Lebanese police and soldiers, Agence France Presse reported.
The armies on both sides of the fence were on alert, as was the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
Shops were closed in Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps, where black flags of mourning were hoisted, as the army reinforced its presence, particularly in the south.
A rally was staged in front of al-Furqan mosque in the Borj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
And a photography exhibition was organized on a pavement adjacent to the Mar Elias camp in the capital Beirut.
Palestinians also staged popular rallies in the Shatila camp, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, and in the Nahr al-Bared camp in the North.
Meanwhile, a number of Lebanese and Palestinian activists staged a sit-in on the eastern outskirts of the occupied Shebaa Farms, around 800 meters from the barbed wire fence, after Lebanese security forces prevented the participants from reaching the Berket al-Naqqar area, state-run National News Agency reported.
The sit-in was organized by the Lebanese Resistance Movement and the International Movement Against Globalization and American and Zionist Hegemony, according to NNA.
However, Liberation and Development bloc MP Qassem Hashem described reports about a “so-called sit-in” near the Berket al-Naqqar area in the southern town of Shebaa as “inaccurate.”
The sit-in “was staged at Shebaa’s entrance, one kilometer away from Berket al-Naqqar,” Qassem said, noting that “the number of participants did not exceed 10.”
Lebanese soldiers manned roadblocks on roads to the border.
An official Iranian delegation later on Sunday toured the border, led by Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, who heads the cultural commission in Iran's parliament. He was accompanied by Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Ghazanfar Roknabadi.
Adel waved a Palestinian flag in the direction of Israeli soldiers watching from the other side of the fence at the border town of Kfar Kila.
"Iran supports the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon in any way it can," Adel said.
During the Six-Day War, Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula, which it returned to Egypt in 1982, Syria's Golan Heights, the West Bank including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, from which Israeli troops and settlers withdrew in 2005.
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