One question - does the include target contain JSF components or is it plain jsp or static text?
If it includes JSF components, those components won't be present in the tree.
JSF 1.2 builds and renders the view in two steps to enable proper content interweaving without the need of f:verbatim or f:subview. The first step performs a request dispatch to the page identified in the request. This process builds the tree, but no render calls are made. After the tree is built, then we call renderAll() which will call the appropriate encodeXXX() methods.
In order to resolve this, the include would have to be performed from the view layer when the tree is being built (essentially a jsp:include nested within your tab).
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