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Al Qaeda Comes to Gaza?

August 23, 2006 5:22 PM

Rt_mideast_hostage_060823_nr_1Terrorism analysts say al Qaeda may have conducted their first operation in Gaza. This after a video was released today of the two Fox News journalists held hostage since August 14 along with an accompanying written statement issued by a previously unknown group calling itself the "Holy Jihad Brigades."

The language in the statement, which denounces the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is similar in style and content to the kind of dispatches issued by Abu Musab al Zarqawi when he was leading al Qaeda in Iraq.

One sentence states, "You infidels and masters of oppression: Convert to Islam and you will be safe…We came to you with the intention of slaughtering or beheading." The statement goes on to denounce "democracy" and the regimes that seek secular goals, such as "democracy and freedom."

"The rhetoric is vintage al Qaeda," said Fawaz Gerges, an ABC News Consultant and professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College. "This is consistent with what we have seen in Iraq and other places."

Also unusual for Palestinian militants was the extraordinary demand issued in the statement that "Muslim prisoners in U.S. jails be released within three days" in exchange for the two Fox journalists. Targeting journalists from an American news organization and making demands on the United States rather than Israel is not typical for Palestinian groups.

The kidnapping of the two journalists may represent the fulfillment of a warning issued by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last March. "We have indications about a presence of al Qaeda in Gaza and the West Bank. This is intelligence information,"  Abbas said in an interview with the Arabic daily newspaper Al Hayat.

If it is confirmed that a branch of al Qaeda is behind the hostage taking, it would represent a major new front for the terrorist organization, which has in the past deferred to Palestinian groups such as Hamas to conduct the "resistance" against Israel.

Analysts believe that al Qaeda has expressed an increasing interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict for a number of reasons, one of which is their major setbacks in Iraq. Their tactics of beheading and mass murder of innocent civilians have not been popular with the majority of Iraqis, and their leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. air attack two months ago.

Al Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan have been dismantled after their allies, the Taliban, were overthrown by the U.S.-led war in October 2001, and their leadership has been forced to seek refuge in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Many of their top operatives have been arrested in the past four years.

By contrast, the increasing chaos of Gaza represents an opportunity for al Qaeda to tap into the growing rage of young Palestinians, frustrated with the corruption of their leaders and the lack of any real progress towards a viable state. The impoverished camps of Gaza represent a "fertile ground" for al Qaeda, according to Palestinian observers.

Finally, the huge political boost achieved by Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite organization, during the last engagement with Israel represents a major challenge for al Qaeda. "Al Qaeda has been overshadowed by Hezbollah. The only way to regain the limelight is to focus its attention on the Palestinian issue," said Gerges.

August 23, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (14)

User Comments

them terror experts...i could of figured that out myself ...oh yah i did 10 days ago...what took you all so long???

there is a saying when in a hole quit digging...another one...they dug straight thru to china and all the way to pluto!!!

Posted by: ravin black | Aug 23, 2006 5:36:46 PM

This is a war of human ideoligy with absolutely no winners, period.
we should all at least have the decency to stop being devils in the name of God. I am talking about all of humanity here.
God is just an acronym for human kinds perrenial need to control and dominate everything they see and touch. For all of our sakes let's hope there is no God, because if there is, we are now all screwed eternally. Who's to blame...You and I.Choice. I am on the side of the oppressed globally.
The losers in this war will be the one's who said and stood for nothing in order to protect that money which ain't gonna save them on the day karma comes knockin'.

Posted by: Eman Lutfi | Aug 23, 2006 7:11:49 PM

Hmm....
If al Qaeda and Hezbollah hate each other so much let's just let them decimate each other and then knock out the winner.

Posted by: Mark | Aug 23, 2006 8:58:29 PM

blah

Posted by: sadf | Aug 23, 2006 11:05:23 PM

funny
mark,take some alqaidah put in afaghanistan against ussr,and
some alqaidah take to iraq,against saddam.and some in syria aqainst assad,and some in lebanon against hisbullah,what a world,and once they wanted to have a vaccation,few days off,what transport they might use

Posted by: naser | Aug 24, 2006 8:01:43 AM

Yes, it does not surprise me in the least that Al-Queda has set up residence in Gaza. Their ultimate goal of course is to destroy Israel and occupy their lands.

Posted by: Richard Frank | Aug 24, 2006 8:03:11 AM

Bin Laden, Bush, Republican politicians, the Military Industrial Complex, Oil Companies, and the security industry, all benefit from Terror. Al Qaeda in Gaza? Everybody can get rich or famous on Terror so why would any of the above sincerely try to stop it! The war on poverty, war on drugs, war on cancer, and anecdotal "wars" of all kinds are like jingles for products and politicians.....we thrive on them!
Everybody needs a bogey man like every movie requires a bad guy. Too bad the most hated man in the world is not Bin Laden and Al Qaeda but our president and Americans! Think about that!

Posted by: Matt Walters | Aug 24, 2006 8:22:15 AM

Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas ( Holy Jihad Brigades) are all cousins with one goal, destroy the West and Infidels. Period. That's the bottom line. It's amazing how the liberal press portrays their demeanor with sympathy and understanding, like we're dealing with a sophisticated and caring Terrorist. (“Insurgent” term from the press).

Posted by: Stu Cotts | Aug 24, 2006 8:41:12 AM

Eman,
By oppressed you mean the ones who choose to strap bombs to their babies over democracy and wish to kill every living Jew? Those "oppressed" types.

Posted by: Mark | Aug 24, 2006 8:59:24 AM

Amazing how these 'terrorist' leaders and such can never be consistantly traced...but we always have access to their latest Video of the Week...

I'm guessing Osama should have a fear-inducing documentary out soon, produced in the caves of Pakistan, that CIA agent Peter Griffin will magically stumble upon as we approach 9/11.

Is there anything that the American public won't believe? Shall we let them know Santa Clause screens all his reindeer for exploding bottles of Head n Shoulders? Land of FreeDUMB indeed.

Posted by: stick_figure_messiah | Aug 24, 2006 9:02:36 AM

My enemy's enemy is my friend.
One never needs to worry about one's enemy's; worry about your friends.

Posted by: Saahib | Aug 24, 2006 9:12:45 AM

It's a good thing that Gaza, Iraq, Iran, the West Bank, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah have nothing to do with each other. Once again, terrorists are bad people. They can not be reasoned with and want nothing more than the destruction of Israel and the collapse of the West. The US did not rally the terrorists by going into Iraq or Afghanistan, they were always there. Remember, we were attacked on September 11th, no the other way around. America must stand together as one and eliminate this threat to our country and way of life.

Posted by: Adrian Reyes | Aug 24, 2006 11:00:40 AM

I am so sick and tired of seeing the news and hearing the hate and discontent. Perhaps it's time to make the region a big black hole with a glaze over it, and be done with it. I realize that's a bit drastic approach, but when is enough going to be enough?

Posted by: dreek | Aug 24, 2006 12:46:53 PM

To Adrian Reyes: I am sure you wrote from the heart, but allow me to take a closer look at how you chose your words: "It's a good thing that Gaza, Iraq, Iran, the West Bank, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah have nothing to do with each other. Once again, terrorists are bad people. They can not be reasoned with and want nothing more than the destruction of Israel and the collapse of the West." Do you not see that your third sentence is a refutation of the first? What Gaza, Iraq, Iran, the West Bank, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah have to do with each other is a shared animosity towards the state of Israel, which they perceive as a colonial imposition of Western values on Islamic cultures. If we do not recognize that this is, at the very least, a point of view that needs to be tested by validity claims (in the spirit of Jurgen Habermas' noble, if idealistic, attempts to characterize the processes by which differing parties can arrive at a mutual understanding), then the bloodshed will continue and, in dreek's language, enough will never be enough! More than ever we need to honor the teachings of Isaiah Berlin, who passionately (if verbosely) argued that the "Western intellectual tradition" was not the only source of ideas or values. As John Gray put it in a recent review, "In opposition to this view Berlin maintained that conflicts of values are real and inescapable, with some of them having no satisfactory solution. He advanced this view not as a form of skepticism but as a universal truth: conflicts of value go with being human." If Berlin never prescribed how, as humans, we could live with these conflicts of value, then Habermas has tried to pick up that gauntlet; and we should all put our best efforts towards translating his idealistic theories into practices for a better world.

Posted by: Stephen Smoliar | Aug 25, 2006 11:43:48 AM

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