Things are taking quite a turn in the fight against Palestinian Sunni extremist groups. In Lebanon, soldiers loyal to the state gather in a posse trying to apprehend bank robbers who have fled into the relative safety of a refugee camp. Terrorist groups have slipped into the historically familiar pattern of alternating ideological and theological violence with banditry. In the ensuing fighting, three soldiers and four militants are killed.

The alleged bandits are tied to the Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist group Fatah al-Islam, which distinguishes itself among the Palestinian factions by its declared adherence to al Qaeda. In retaliation, Fatah al-Islam members opened fire on a Lebanese army patrol killing four additional soldiers. By the end of the weekend, the toll had risen to 48 dead, including 23 soldiers and 19 terrorists.

The terrorist group was already on the Lebanese army’s radar screen following a pair of bus bombings last February that targeted Christians. The flare-up of violence in Lebanon came only a few days after the latest discussion in the United Nations Security Council on a resolution to forge ahead with a judicial tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The tribunal is opposed by Damascus, because the preliminary investigations point to top level Syrian involvement.

The Lebanese strife, however, is also part of a wider struggle against the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis on the one hand and against Sunni extremism on the other. Down the coast in the Gaza Strip, other Palestinian Sunni extremists, organized under the Hamas banner, have been firing rockets into Israeli towns and cities and battling Fatah forces loyal to the president of the Palestinian Arab authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The government in Jerusalem, after months of restraint, finally gave a green light to the air force to pound Hamas positions, including but not limited to rocket sites. Ground forces also crossed over into northern Gaza to help pinpoint targets.

This has produced some familiar echoes of cries for restraint on all sides. But the story here is the rise of extremist factionalism in the weaker Mideast Sunni areas, notably Lebanon, Palestinian areas, and Iraq (which was Sunni-dominated until the fall of Saddam). Al Qaeda is now a factor in all three. On the other side of the Arab states is arrayed the rising power of Iran and its allies. One can only imagine what the region would look like absent American and Israeli resolve and the small but not-insignificant help from the French in Lebanon and from the British in Iraq.