In the Palestinian Diaspora, They Joined Early . . . In the Territories, They Delayed in Receiving It
(Part One of Two)
Hazem al-Amin Al-Hayat - 07/04/06//
AMMAN, Jordan- In Amman there is much talk about the impending arrival of al-Qaida to the West Bank. This speculation has become stronger after the recent statements by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to al-Hayat, in which he referred to information about al-Qaida activities on the West Bank, saying this would expose the entire region to convulsions.
However, the Palestinians have a long story with al-Qaida or groups espousing "salafi jihadism" [Salafi means fundamentalist in that it glorifies the early practitioners of Islam]. The experience has taken place since the beginning of the Arab Afghans struggle, although unlike other Arab societies, Palestinians in the territories were somewhat "late" in seeing the phenomenon among them.
This two-part article in al-Hayat uses information from diplomats and security organizations about the renewed activities by al-Qaida in Gaza and the possibility that such groups will arrive in the West Bank. The timing for such an article involves the victory by Hamas in Palestinian legislative elections. Today's installment will deal with al-Qaida in the Palestinian Diaspora and the presence of al-Qaida and Islamic Jihad, beginning with Saleh Siriyya to Abu Anas al-Shami.
When Abu Abdullah al-Filastini, one of the Arab Afghans, who was an early jihadist in Afghanistan, was crossing the treacherous Hindu Kush mountain range, he was occupied by a question that he didn't try to answer: wasn't going to Palestine easier than crossing these winding mountains? It was a question that would accompany many Palestinians who experienced the "international jihad," especially those who played roles in setting up the jihad movement outside Palestine. We can say that the Palestinians were the radical fuel for most of these Islamic movements which they joined, from Egypt to Jordan and ending in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq.
The al-Qaida Organization (Tanzim al-Qaida) almost constitutes an exception regarding the "absence of the nation" in its exhortations. It is an idea (that has become degraded) without a nation, an action stripped of any tangible claim. For the Palestinians of the Diaspora, Palestine is more than a nation and less than territory. In one sense, it is an idea that accompanies Palestinians as they cross the Hindu Kush. There is no land for them to remember; no village, no city. The thoughts accompanying Abu Abdullah in the Hindu Kush were nothing more than a passing idea. Some of this might explain the phenomenon of the early and intense involvement of Diaspora Palestinians in Salafi Jihadist movements and later al-Qaida, with its related groups and factions. Meanwhile, the late adherence of Palestinians in the territories to al-Qaida, which Abbas noted in his conversation with al-Hayat, is related to the fact that Palestinians of the Diaspora remain subject to the situation in the territories.
Only two months ago, the Israeli police intercepted a telephone call between a Palestinian from the West Bank and a resident of a refugee camp in Jordan; the police realized that someone was preparing to establish an al-Qaida cell in the West Bank. The Jordanian authorities were informed of the name of the caller in the refugee camp and other names that were mentioned in the conversation, while the West Bank Palestinian and another man with him were arrested. In the Jordanians' investigation, it turned out that the matter was no more than a declaration of intentions and did not involve operational planning. These are the kind of things that Jordanian security observes and anticipates, but doesn't take action against. The Israeli authorities announced a short time later that it had detained activists in a cell affiliated with al-Qaida in the West Bank.
Expectations that al-Qaida has transferred its activities to the West Bank and Gaza are supported by many facts and much analysis.
Western security sources have confirmed to al-Hayat that a Takfir group [which believes in killing Muslim "unbelievers"] composed of around 10 people is active in Gaza, under the name al-Qaida Organization, and is engaged in preparation and assembling sums of money. The sources discussed the foiling of an operation planned by this group, which targeted a vital facility in Gaza. This information is not the only indication of al-Qaida's beginning activities in Gaza, followed by the West Bank and the Green Line. The recent Palestinian elections were preceded by a truce announced by Hamas, which was victorious in the polls. The truce and participation in the election led to various reactions within the military wing of the movement (the Izzeddine al-Qassam Brigades), particularly since the truce meant excluding Hamas' military organization, while the elections and the results meant a victory for the political alternative, which the military wing doesn't control. Jordanian Security and Jordanian and Palestinian forces in Amman began hearing reports that appeared to indicate a split or dispute between the political leadership and the military wing in Gaza led by Mohammed Daif. A Palestinian source in Amman believed that Abbas' reference to security reports claiming that al-Qaida had found a foothold in the West Bank and Gaza means implicitly that there is information about contacts between Daif and military officials in Hamas, and al-Qaida channels in Jordan and Iraq.
However, the arrival of al-Qaida in Gaza and the West Bank, which most sources following the matter believe is inevitable, is a result and not the beginning of a new phase. It's the end of the context of involvement by Palestinians in Salafi Jihadist movements, when the latter moved from propagating its cause to military action in the mid-1970s. Perhaps the strange thing is this delay in reaching Gaza and the West Bank, after the activities of Palestinians in this current spread to all parts of the world. If the Palestinian Sheikh Abdullah Azzam is the person who in the mid-1980s established the Beit al-Ansar (House of Partisans) in Peshawar, Pakistan, a group considered the nucleus of al-Qaida, the Palestinian Saleh Siriyya preceded Azzam by more than a decade in declaring Jihad against political regimes, via what was called the Military Faculty Organization in Egypt, most of whose members have been executed. The strange thing is that Siriyya and Azzam were linked by a relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood and Fatah, before becoming independent from them.
Around two years ago, and about 15 years after his return from his first Jihad experience, in Afghanistan, Abu Abdullah al-Filastini, who resided in Jordan, decided to repeat the experience in Iraq. During the 15 years separating his first and second "exits" (leaving a country for Jihad), Palestine was close-by and time moved quickly, unlike in Afghanistan. Abu Abdullah says that "rapid means of communication and transport push time along with them, while in Afghanistan, time moved as quickly as the beasts of burden that were transporting it." However, time moving quickly is a sign of entering the transitory world, while going slowly in Afghanistan resembles the nonexistence of time on the Day of Judgment.
Abu Abdullah was born in 1963 in a West Bank town; he and his family were displaced in 1967 to Jordan. Abu Abdullah's family was part of a PLO environment, with all of this organization's various factions. Before Black September in 1970, Abu Abdullah's brother was killed, he was a young man and member of al-Saiqa (the Palestinian branch of the Syrian Baath Party), which was in the PLO at the time. Abu Abdullah grew up in the shadow of the "continuing disappointments" that have beset the Palestinians since 1970; he experienced the failure of the pan-Arab and leftist organizations, which led confrontations with Israel during the 1970s and 1980s. He says that in 1986, he decided to become religious committed, after feeling that "injustice can only be combated by force and bravery." A few months later he left for Afghanistan and spent months there before returning a trained mujahid, with credentials. After his return, he devoted himself to studying with Salafi jihad sheikhs in more than one place in Jordan. During this period, he worked in modest and temporary professions, until the time of his "second exodus" in 2004, toward Iraq.
Abu Abdullah went to Damascus, where he had to wait a few days before being contacted by someone who could get him to Baghdad. In Damascus, where he visited the souqs, he decided to visit the offices of al-Saiqa, to ask about the details of the killing of his brother, if he could find anyone who knew them. Abu Abdullah said, "I found the building of al-Saiqa of Damascus to be big, decrepit and empty of any resident, except a bored guard. I asked him if he could help me get to someone who knew what I wanted. The guard smiled and said that only one person comes to this office, once a month, and no one else shows up. He didn't think that person knew anything about my brother." After a few days spent in Damascus, Abu Abdullah headed for the Al-Bukamal region on the Syrian-Iraqi border. During his attempt to cross, Syrian police arrested him and kept him in prison for a month. They then released him on the Jordanian border and he returned to the Palestinian refugee camp in Amman.
Abu Abdullah's story sheds light on many aspects of the relationship between al-Qaida and Palestinian refugees in Jordan and others in the Diaspora: a realistic, light and old relationship with Palestine, and unending myths, and the folding of the idea of a place of the nation and real life. However, other aspects cannot be shed light on via short incidents from the biography of a mujahid, especially since Palestinians in al-Qaida and those who were partisans of Salafi jihad were the nucleus upon which the organization was built and used to encourage its activities.
In the beginning, Fatah formed the environment for the work of Palestinian Islamists whose aspirations for involvement in military activity were not expressed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, Abdullah Azzam joined Fatah prior to 1970 and set up in Jordan what were called the "sheikhs' camps," which comprised a number of Palestinian sheikhs who were not permitted by the Muslim Brotherhood to engage in any military actions. During this decade, Saleh Siriyya arrived in Jordan, from the West Bank. After Black September in 1970 he moved to Iraq, along with his Palestinian "brother," called Abdel-Aziz Shandali. There, they met Sheikh Abdel-Aziz al-Badri, one of the most radical Islamist figures in Iraq. However, it was not long before the Baath Party killed al-Badri and pursued Siriyya and Shandali, who fled to Egypt. In Egypt, Siriyya began to build the Mohammed Youth (Shabab Mohammed) organization, or what was called the Military Faculty Organization (some of its members were students there), until he was arrested and executed. Hassan Hinniyeh, a researcher, believes that "Siriyya's impact was great on jihadist groups in Egypt, and especially on Mohammed Abdel-Salam Faraj, considered the founder of Egypt's al-Jihad Organization (Tanzim al-Jihad); he was a classmate of Siriyya at Cairo University and he clearly was influenced by him in his famous book, "al-Farida al-Gha'iba" (The Absent Religious Duty). At this time, another Palestinian arrived in Cairo, Mohammed Salem Rahhal, who was another Palestinian channel that fed the violent trend in Egyptian groups following Sayyed Qutb. Rahhal stayed at al-Azhar and began to work on spreading his call, which termed the regimes apostate and encouraged "believers" to engage in jihad against them. He was arrested by the Egyptian authorities about a year before the assassination of President Anwar Sadat and returned to Jordan, where he is today, in a mental institution in Amman.
Thus, the Palestinians preceded the Egyptians in operational jihad action in Egypt. Sayyed Qutb had published his book Signposts on the Road (Ma'alim fil-Tariq) in 1966. In it, he declares the regimes to be apostate and calls on people to fight them. However, Saleh Siriyya took over the launch of field operations through his 1974 attempt to storm the Military Faculty, and later, the role of Rahhal in Cairo became known.
During this period, the rise of Fatah represented a refuge for Palestinian national feeling, which had been shattered by the defeat in 1967. Fatah was more than a political or military organization; it was the image of Palestinian Diaspora society. Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) was the channel for merging Palestinian nationalism with ideas that went beyond it, such as Maoism, and do not end with Takfirist religious thought. In Fatah, in its capacity as an arena for these ideas, there were borrowings that had not been seen by organizations of Islamists, the left, and Marxists. Islamic radicalism, which later led to jihad networks and then al-Qaida, began to enrich its discourse with some leftist concepts, which had been absent from traditional political rhetoric, such as that of the Muslim Brotherhood. Abu Hinniyeh lays out a series of these concepts and expressions taken from the leftist lexicon and incorporated with Islamic discourse in a similar way. Imperialism has become tyranny, and regimes acting as agents of foreign powers are now apostate and renegade; the expression "firm and compact revolutionary party" has been replaced by "fighting vanguard and unique Quranic generation."
As long as Islam was a foundation of Palestinian nationalism since it began to form, the al-Aqsa Mosque and al-Buraq [upon which the Prophet Mohammed ascended to Heaven] are central symbols of this nationalism, the founding figures of which are mostly muftis and sheikhs and their sons. Hajj Amin Husseini was the mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Izzeddine al-Qassam came to Palestine from Jableh in Syria and played a basic role in Islamicizing Palestinian nationalism. Ahmad Shuqairy was the son of the mufti of Acre, As'ad al-Shuqairy. In this way, Islam became confused with Palestinian identity in Fatah.
However, radical Palestinian Islam, and to the extent that it appeared in the 1970s from Palestinian nationalism, also appeared from its denial, by substituting an Islamic State wherever such a state could be founded. Likewise, in the discourse of these groups, Palestine became a goal which should be prepared for by bringing down the entire "Arab state system." Thus, bit by bit, the Palestinian mujahidin began to distance themselves from Palestine, and the more they went in this direction, Palestine disappeared as a nation, becoming evoked as something holy, or as an idea. Perhaps these tendencies helped make approaching this holy thing resemble something that was impossible. Whenever I ask a Palestinian mujahid in Jordan who has been to Afghanistan or Iraq about the reason for choosing jihad there instead of Palestine, he answers that it is impossible and that the borders are closed. Palestine is the "delayed prayer direction (qibla) of jihad" and mujahidun have gone to Chechnya, Afghanistan, Bosnia and recently Iraq to prepare for this.
Nothing has been made ready to receive Salafi Jihadism and its al-Qaida forms as the Palestinian camps in Jordan. A shattered and contested identity between Palestine and Jordan, poverty, high population density, the presence of religion as an alternative refuge for all of these instances of dispossession. Waves of traditional religious feeling are penetrating unlimited socio-economic elements. At times, the Palestinians who came back from Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War bring with them the components of a new culture to the religious infrastructure; at others, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi blows on the embers of this belief, while Israel performs the third step, namely sending a new group of refugees to these camps, increasing the fertility of extremism.
The 1990s produced a new generation of Palestinian "Salafi mujahidin," and they, like their predecessors in earlier decades, have turned into the stars of jihadist Islam around the world. They are people like Issam al-Barqawi (Abu Mohammed al-Maqdasi), Omar Mohammed Othman Abu Omar (Abu Qutada al-Filastini), and Omar Youssef Joumaa (Abu Anas al-Shami). al-Maqdasi and al-Shami were among the Palestinians who returned from Kuwait to Jordan after the Gulf War and Abu Qutada left Jordan in 1992 for London, where he settled and since that time has been known as the mufti of the hard-line Islamist organizations in Europe. The British authorities arrested him two years ago. Abu Anas al-Shami became the religious official for al-Zarqawi's organization in Iraq and was killed there, while Abu Mohammed al-Maqdasi remains in prison in Jordan, where he has been for a number of years.
They are the "Palestinian Afghan" generation that was not given birth to by Fatah; between these individuals and Palestine as a nation, a break has been enshrined. Palestinian is one of the two qiblas (places where one faces to pray) and to the extent that this is true, Palestine is distant. Abu Qutada left for London and Abu Anas al-Shami for Iraq. Before this, all three went to Afghanistan, instead of Palestine. However, all followers of Salafi jihad movements in Jordan affirm that the Palestinian cause is a part of the concerns of jihadist Islam, in its Salafi form, and that "activists of this orientation, wherever they go, they are headed for Palestine, if they are not (in reality)." Abu Abdullah al-Filastini says, "I left Palestine and went to Iraq. There is a Muslim people there and jihad in support of any Muslim is a victory for Palestine."
Today, however, there is a new generation of Salafi jihadists, a hybrid group, according to Jordanian security sources. It is a generation that is not being monitored, and did not go to Afghanistan. Some of this generation went to Iraq. However, their recruiting ability has grown and security agencies can no longer rely on traditional surveillance measures. It appears to have a share of the Palestinian arena in areas of the Diaspora, principally, and then in other parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Wherever you go in Palestinian refugee camps and Palestinian areas of Jordan, you feel the amount of support for radical Islamist currents. The conviction will grow that letting security organizations treat the matter isn't the only way to limit this phenomenon.
In a letter sent by Abu Mohammed al-Maqdasi from prison to al-Zarqawi, he says that he is now eyeing the western bank of the Jordan River. The letter provoked resentment by al-Zarqawi supporters in Jordan, as it was considered a dropping of the religious cover for the actions of al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and a call for beginning work in the West Bank and Gaza. There are followers of al-Maqdasi among Palestinians in Jordan, as long as those who cross from the east bank to the west bank of the river among them, while the books of Salafi jihadism have begun to enter the West Bank in large numbers. These are all indications of a beginning. As for the sign that many observers noticed, which was related to the beginning of activity by al-Qaida in the West Bank and Gaza, this involves a letter by the number two man in al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to the leadership of Hamas. In it, al-Zawahiri considers that Hamas has slipped down the road of democracy and elections, predicting that other options will become available to the Palestinians.
Palestinian security sources affirm that al-Qaida has not appointed an Amir [commander] for Palestine independent of the Amir of Sham [Greater Syria], as is the case with al-Zarqawi and his amir's position in the organization in Iraq. This means that Palestine is not a goal that is independent of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. However, these sources expect that this could take place soon. Jordanian security sources, meanwhile, see a difference in the operations of al-Qaida and its local branches. The amirs appointed by the al-Qaida mother organization for various regions are tasked with recruiting people for work outside their regions. When the mother organization wants to target Israel, it sent Pakistanis for that purpose; it had earlier used many Palestinians, but outside Palestine. Of course, this doesn't mean that local branches of al-Qaida will be formed according to the same logic, but the functions and missions of these branches will be subject to a partially independent logic.
The arrival of al-Qaida in the West Bank and Gaza is not a procedural matter. Al-Qaida has become a modus operandi and a method of thought and whoever adopts method of belief should act, which is not easy. The problem is that the dispute with al-Qaida in many Islamic circles is limited to the method of action and not the objectives. It is only technical matter to move from believe in peaceful change to using violent means. In Palestine, it is easy to narrow this distance between the two, in light of the continuing failure of the peace process.
A friend of a religious official in the Qaida of Islam in Iraq organization, Abu Anas al-Shami, says that he was a reformist salafi and didn't believe in violence to spread the word. His transformation only took a few months, which he spent in prison, when he met up with a number of jihadists, who were able to transfer his allegiance. Abu Anas left prison and waited for the opportunity to join al-Zarqawi, which is what took place. Abu Anas, in his version of the first battle of Falluja in 2004, indicates more than once the weakness of his military education, as well as his fear and hesitation. These are rare terms in the vocabulary of jihadists.
(Part 1 of 2)
Part Two - "International Jihad" Accelerates Toward the West Bank and Gaza
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