When George Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks by launching his “war on terror”, Ariel Sharon seized the moment. Israel, too, was fighting terror, he insisted, and there was no difference between al Qa'eda and Hamas or Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.The Israeli prime minister obtained Mr Bush's backing for burying the Oslo peace process and launching a series of incursions into the West Bank that left the PLO leader Yasser Arafat under the permanent siege that hastened his death.
When Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election the following year, Israel and the US insisted that it was a terrorist entity and began implementing the economic sanctions that became a full-blown siege in 2007 after Hamas seized control of Gaza: it was all part of the “war on terror”.What, then, are the US and Israel to make of Hamas's merciless destruction of an al Qa'eda aspirant organisation in Rafah two weeks ago? The “war on terror” had come to Gaza, and Israel – whether it realised it or not – needed Hamas to prevail against a more militant Palestinian rival.
Of course, the conflation of Hamas and al Qa'eda was always crude propaganda. Despite a common Islamist heritage, Hamas is first and foremost a Palestinian nationalist organisation that has no truck with Osama bin Laden's fantasy of global jihad. Its pragmatism has prompted savage verbal attacks from al Qa'eda spokesmen condemning Hamas's participation in elections and its ceasefires with Israel as signs that it has “betrayed Allah and its martyrs”. When Ayman Zawahiri bashed Hamas for adopting a Saudi-brokered unity agreement with Fatah in 2007, the Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan sneered that his organisation didn't need the advice of a “fugitive in the Afghan mountains” who had no knowledge of Palestinian reality.
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Although al Qa'eda's presence in Gaza is probably limited to a handful of individuals, Hamas has shown little patience for organisations that have tried to open franchises of the Bin Laden brand. When the self-styled “Army of Islam” kidnapped the BBC reporter Alan Johnston in 2007, it was Hamas that forced them to let him go. So when the pro-al Qa'eda cleric Abdel Latif Moussa formed his Jund Ansar Allah group and challenged Hamas's authority by declaring Rafah an Islamic emirate under its own rule, Hamas felt compelled to brutally suppress the challenge. In the firefight that ensued, more than 20 of the group's militants were killed, including the cleric himself.
For some Israeli commentators, the incident was a wake-up call. One of them, Nehemiah Strassler, cautioned that by destroying Yasser Arafat, Israel had brought Hamas to power, and now by its siege of Gaza it was empowering al Qa'eda: “That's because on our side people don't want to understand that when the oppression increases and there is nothing to lose, the adversary doesn't surrender and grovel. Just the opposite. He becomes more radical � so when poverty in Gaza increases and unemployment is on the rise, al Qa'eda will take control � and we will long for that terrible Hamas.”
But as events in Rafah showed, Hamas is not about to sit back and allow itself to be eclipsed. There is little sympathy among Palestinians for al Qa'eda's world view, and Hamas demonstrated a willingness to act swiftly and brutally against any attempts to forcefully overthrow it (and of course, that was also a message to Fatah).Regardless of what it says in public, Israel will also have been impressed by the lengths to which Hamas was willing to go to enforce its authority – and, by extension, its ceasefire. Israel may, largely to satisfy the Americans, engage in symbolic political talks with Mahmoud Abbas, but it negotiates (via Egypt) with Hamas on the practical matters of keeping the peace along its southern flank and the release of its captive soldier, Gilad Shalit. The Jund Ansar Al
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document.write(''); The Hamas message: if you think we're bad, try al Qa'eda
Tony Karon
Last Updated: August 23. 2009 12:27AM UAE / August 22. 2009 8:27PM GMT
When George Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks by launching his “war on terror”, Ariel Sharon seized the moment. Israel, too, was fighting terror, he insisted, and there was no difference between al Qa'eda and Hamas or Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.The Israeli prime minister obtained Mr Bush's backing for burying the Oslo peace process and launching a series of incursions into the West Bank that left the PLO leader Yasser Arafat under the permanent siege that hastened his death.
When Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election the following year, Israel and the US insisted that it was a terrorist entity and began implementing the economic sanctions that became a full-blown siege in 2007 after Hamas seized control of Gaza: it was all part of the “war on terror”.What, then, are the US and Israel to make of Hamas's merciless destruction of an al Qa'eda aspirant organisation in Rafah two weeks ago? The “war on terror” had come to Gaza, and Israel – whether it realised it or not – needed Hamas to prevail against a more militant Palestinian rival.
Of course, the conflation of Hamas and al Qa'eda was always crude propaganda. Despite a common Islamist heritage, Hamas is first and foremost a Palestinian nationalist organisation that has no truck with Osama bin Laden's fantasy of global jihad. Its pragmatism has prompted savage verbal attacks from al Qa'eda spokesmen condemning Hamas's participation in elections and its ceasefires with Israel as signs that it has “betrayed Allah and its martyrs”. When Ayman Zawahiri bashed Hamas for adopting a Saudi-brokered unity agreement with Fatah in 2007, the Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan sneered that his organisation didn't need the advice of a “fugitive in the Afghan mountains” who had no knowledge of Palestinian reality.
document.write('');
Although al Qa'eda's presence in Gaza is probably limited to a handful of individuals, Hamas has shown little patience for organisations that have tried to open franchises of the Bin Laden brand. When the self-styled “Army of Islam” kidnapped the BBC reporter Alan Johnston in 2007, it was Hamas that forced them to let him go. So when the pro-al Qa'eda cleric Abdel Latif Moussa formed his Jund Ansar Allah group and challenged Hamas's authority by declaring Rafah an Islamic emirate under its own rule, Hamas felt compelled to brutally suppress the challenge. In the firefight that ensued, more than 20 of the group's militants were killed, including the cleric himself.
For some Israeli commentators, the incident was a wake-up call. One of them, Nehemiah Strassler, cautioned that by destroying Yasser Arafat, Israel had brought Hamas to power, and now by its siege of Gaza it was empowering al Qa'eda: “That's because on our side people don't want to understand that when the oppression increases and there is nothing to lose, the adversary doesn't surrender and grovel. Just the opposite. He becomes more radical � so when poverty in Gaza increases and unemployment is on the rise, al Qa'eda will take control � and we will long for that terrible Hamas.”
But as events in Rafah showed, Hamas is not about to sit back and allow itself to be eclipsed. There is little sympathy among Palestinians for al Qa'eda's world view, and Hamas demonstrated a willingness to act swiftly and brutally against any attempts to forcefully overthrow it (and of course, that was also a message to Fatah).Regardless of what it says in public, Israel will also have been impressed by the lengths to which Hamas was willing to go to enforce its authority – and, by extension, its ceasefire. Israel may, largely to satisfy the Americans, engage in symbolic political talks with Mahmoud Abbas, but it negotiates (via Egypt) with Hamas on the practical matters of keeping the peace along its southern flank and the release of its captive soldier, Gilad Shalit. The Jund Ansar Allah takedown won't harm the growing recognition in the West that Hamas is an indispensable part of any peace process.
The paradoxes here run deep, of course: it was Hamas that perfected the art of undermining Mr Arafat by attacking Israel over his head. Now that Hamas is positioning itself to act as a more responsible Palestinian leadership, it faces the same challenge. Still, no one – not Israel, not the West, not Egypt, not Fatah – can afford to be agnostic on the outcome of Hamas's battle with would-be al Qa'eda elements. Hamas is already under pressure over holding its fire while the siege of Gaza remains in force. Winter is a few months away, and thousands of Gazans are still living in tents because the Israelis (and Egyptians) have refused to allow in the construction materials necessary to rebuild homes destroyed during Israel's January invasion.
If Hamas maintains a truce while the suffering of Gazans goes unchecked, it may be forced by pressure from within its own ranks to revert to confrontation – or else find its ability to restrain others from doing so considerably diminished. Unless Gaza is quickly rehabilitated and reintegrated into the Palestinian Authority via agreements between Hamas and Fatah – blessed, or at least accepted, by the US and the Israelis – the siege will produce a “Mogadishu effect” that empowers forces more radical than Hamas. And both Israelis and Palestinians will bear the consequences.
Tony Karon blogs at rootlesscosmopolitan.comtonykaron@gmail.com
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