Current Affairs

If the conflict in Gaza is going to last months how will it be possible for the Palestinians who have moved to the border exist. That seems to be on the lips of the international community that is calling for a ceasefire, but the Israelis are determined to fight this war until Hamas’ military wing is exhausted of personnel. Nasrallah in a speech today did not act as a precursor to more bad news for the Israelis and open a second front, instead he lambasted the Arab world for its inherent indifference to the conflict and told his supporters that he as well as Iran were surprised by the 7^th October attacks, which in many ways gets Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran off the hook.

After Hamas’ rampage on 7^th October, Netanyahu and others compared Hamas and their supporters as identical to the Islamic State. Israel was quick to demonize the attack and add fuel to an argument that has raged right through the West after the Islamic State took into its fold those that attacked people going to concerts, going to football matches and in the case of some were thwarted by off duty policemen. “Same tactic, different name,” the Israeli government account on Twitter declared. It was understandable that the Israeli government felt that Hamas had replicated the horrors of ISIS, because of the brutality of Hamas’ attack massacring 1,400, including women and children.

According to Cole Bunzel, writing in Foreign Affairs, Hamas does not share a relationship with ISIS, who excommunicated (Tafiq) the group for its close relationship with Iran. But the Israeli government has not only compared Hamas to ISIS, it has also argued that what happened to Israel on the 7^th October was similar to 9/11, which both gives America an image of what happened to it and also an enemy that has committed an atrocity that has been etched on the minds of all Americans. The Israelis argued that Hamas has links to both ISIS and Al Qaeda, which by the butchery, rapes, murders and revelry of those who committed the atrocities can be seen on the videos taken by the terrorists at the time. But Hamas aren’t linked to these organisations, they are part of the argument that has raged since the beginning of the State of Israel, they are a reaction to Palestinians not just in the West Bank and Gaza, but the diaspora that have been spread across the Middle East, Europe and America. Angry, powerless and enraged by what is happening across the West Bank and Gaza, they feel that they have nothing but empty promises and this has been going on since the formation of the Israeli state.

At times this anger has bubbled over into acts of repulsion, hijacks in the 1970s, attacks on Israelis queueing for flights, the invasion of Lebanon, the blowing up of the Israeli embassy in Argentina, suicide bombers on buses in Tel Aviv and other attacks too numerous to detail. Each attack worse than the last, but all a realisation about the frustration of a people who have lost their home country. The Islamisation of terrorism has to a degree been radicalised by the dissident Palestinian groups that have attacked Israel, but they do not believe that the Palestinians are a party to the most radical arguments that have been put forward by groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Before the 9/11 attacks Bin Laden addressed the United States saying that “America, nor anyone living in America, will enjoy safety until safety becomes a reality for us living in Palestine.” But the main argument of the jihadis is warfare against the rulers of the states in the Middle East, states led by the likes of Mohammed bin Salman, Fatah al Sisi or even Bashar al Assad in Syria. But ISIS and Al Qaeda have not been active in Israel and Palestine, although they both share radical arguments concerning the Palestinian cause, especially over the Al Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in the Muslim world.

According to Cole Bunzel: a senior al Qaeda commander named Mustafa Abu al Yazid in a Al Jazeera interview said that “Hamas share the same thinking and same methodology.” this led to a public rebuke and the commander argued that Al Qaeda’s approach to “Hamas was to distinguish between Hamas as a political organization […] and the righteous mujahideen fighting under Hamas’ banner.” Muhammed al Maqdisi, a Jordanian, argued that Hamas’ political and armed wing were not implementing Sharia and that those who chose democracy and were killed “were not martyrs but were a corpse.”

For ISIS, the argument is not whether Hamas are fighting for Islam but their relationship with Iran and Hezbollah, they argue that the battle is not with Israel but the Apothesis leadership in the Arab world. In the 2016 weekly newsletter, al-Naba they argued that Hamas was apostate for practicing “the polytheism of democracy” and failing to apply Sharia Law. It is not that Israel is a threat to ISIS, but they are non believers and as much as that, Israel apart from the Al Aqsa mosque holds no importance in comparison to the aposthates who lead the Arab world. However, in 2022 a Palestinian did swear an oath to ISIS and was involved in a stabbing and car ramming, but overall there have been few attacks by those affiliated to ISIS in terrorist attacks in Israel and against Israel.

On 15^th October Al Qaeda released a statement from the senior leadership that celebrated the 7^th October Hamas attack, and called for a mass mobilisation to aid the fight against the IDF. The statement called on Muslims to “target Zionists on the streets in countries that had normalised their relationship with Israel under the Abraham Accords. The Egyptian who shot the two Israeli tourists and their tour guide was mentioned as an affiliate and much in the same way that Al Qaeda has operated they have claimed responsibility for the attack in Egypt.

Whether Israel’s assertion that they are fighting a version of ISIS, is not necessarily true, but Hamas in a well planned operation took advantage of Israel’s failure to secure Gaza in the mistaken belief that the West Bank was more of a problem. The barbarity of the attack by Hamas on the innocent, women and children has left over 1,300 dead and a further 200 held captive in the attack on southern Israel. The messages from Al Qaeda should be considered as hot air by an inactive but very dangerous organisation, but the argument that Hamas are apostates who are not imposing Sharia law is also a sign that Hamas were never that widely supported by these groups, especially with their links to Hezbollah and Iran. But there is a danger that what comes after Hamas if Israel is able to squash it, maybe more radical as history has shown in the years since the formation of the Israeli state that what comes next is more radical.