Osama's Shadow Over Israel?

Three terrorist incidents directed against Israeli nationals and interests since November last year do notfall into the pattern of the normal terrorist strikes of which Israel and its nationals have been victims.

The first of these incidents took place in Mombasa in November last year, details of which are well knownand hence need no repetition.  In my commentsthen,, I had commented on this incident as follows:

"When bin Laden announced the formation of the International Islamic Front (IIF) in the beginning of1998 and issued its first fatwa, it designated the USA and Israel (the crusaders and the Jewish people as heput it) as the principal enemies of Islam and called for attacks on them.  In many of his subsequentstatements, this characterisation of the US and Israel as the principal enemies of Islam has been a recurringtheme.

"However, despite this, Al Qaeda and the other components of the IIF had confined their attacks mainlyto US and other Western targets and avoided attacks on Israeli nationals and interests, though some Jewishpersons were reported to have been killed in the terrorist strike by Al Qaeda in Tunisia earlier this year.

"This was due to the anxiety of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and other organisationsallied to it not to be perceived by the USA as having links with Al Qaeda or the IIF.  The PLO used to beof the view that the Palestinians would never be able to achieve their political objective without the supportof the USA and, therefore, wanted that the Palestinian organisations should keep away from bin Laden. While there are Palestinians serving in Al Qaeda, no Palestinian organisation is a member of the IIF.

"Bin Laden too respected the concerns of the Palestinian organisations and avoided any terroriststrike against Israeli targets lest there be any difficulties for the Palestinian organisations in theirattempt to get the political support of the West against Israel.  If the strikes in Mombasa areestablished to be the work of Al Qaeda or the IIF, this would show that this consideration no longer acts as arestraining factor. 

Either Al Qaeda and the IIF have decided to strike at Israeli targets without worrying about the concernsof the Palestinian organisations or they undertook the Mombasa operations with the approval or at the instanceof the Palestinian organisations, which have been disillusioned with the failure of the US to restrain Israeland, therefore, see no longer any need to keep away from bin Laden.  More attacks on Israeli lives andinterests are likely . "

(End of citation)

The second terrorist strike, which does not fit into the normal pattern, took place at Haifa in Israel onOctober 4, 2003, when 20 innocent civilians, including reportedly some children, were brutally killed by awoman suicide bomber, believed to be from the Islamic jihad, in a local restaurant called Maxim.  The AlJazeera and other Arabic TV channels had claimed that the restaurant was part-owned by an Arab and thatsome of those killed were Arabs.

While large sections of the international media focussed on the family background of the suicide bomber andthe alleged death of one of her brothers at the hands of the Israelis in an unfortunate attempt to rationaliseher action in brutally killing innocent children, women and men, they did not highlight another ominous aspectof the terrorist strike.

The owner of the restaurant and the non-Jewish victims were not Arab Muslims as initially projected but,Maronite Christian migrants from the Lebanon.  In an article in the Jerusalem Post of October 10,2003, Walid Phares, a US-based Professor of Middle East Studies and a terrorism expert, has drawn attention tothis and raised the following questions:

"Non-Shabbat-observing Haifa Jews eat at various local restaurants. Why would Islamist suicide bombersknowingly target a Lebanese Christian restaurant in Israel, when they could have attacked any culinaryestablishment? Why did bomber Hanadi Jaradat select this particular eatery?"

He goes on to say:

"Indicating (by Al Jazeera and others) the real ethnic and  religious identities of the ownersand the workers would open a new chapter in the jihadists' war, both in Israel and the Middle East."

What is this new chapter about? The Professor does not explain, but  anyone who has been studyingcarefully the pre and post-9/11 terrorist strikes of the Al Qaeda and the Pakistani and South-East Asiancomponents of the IIF would have been struck by the ominous similarity to the targeted killing of Christiansand Christian establishments by the Al Qaeda-brainwashed jihadi elements in Indonesia and similar targetedkillings of Christians in Pakistan last year by the Pakistani components of the IIF.

Even if one accepts that the Haifa suicide bomber had cause for personal anger against the Israelis, thatdoes not explain who selected this particular restaurant owned by a Christian and hence frequented byChristians. The Islamic Jihad exploited her personal tragedy and anger to direct her to the restaurant inorder to achieve targeted killings of Christians as part of the jihad of the IIF against the Christians andthe Jewish people.

While intervening during the discussions at a conference in  Jerusalem on October 12, 2003, I haddrawn attention to the Haifa incident and said that this incident needed to be investigated carefully sinceone could smell the hand and inspiration of bin Laden's IIF in it. 

Subsequently, while discussing my assessment with some of the participants in the margins of theconference, I had stated that if my assessment proved to be correct, one could expect targeted attacks on USand other Western tourists in Israel -- a Bali-type incident.

On October 15, 2003, three American officials were killed and one other was injured when the convoy ofvehicles in which they were travelling in northern Gaza was attacked by unidentified elements. Is there alinkage between the Haifa attack on a Christian-owned establishment and the Gaza attack on the Americans? Mostprobably yes.

These incidents show that the jihadi terrorist elements subscribing to the anti-US and anti-Israeliideology of the Al Qaeda and the IIF are probably assuming ascendancy in the proxy war being waged againstIsrael by Syria and its other adversaries through their surrogates such as the PLO, the Hamas, the IslamicJihad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade etc.

There is as yet no evidence to show the infiltration of non-Palestinian elements into the areas controlledby the Palestine Authority (PA) for organising terrorist strikes not only against Israeli (Jewish) civiliansas they have hitherto been doing, but also against the Christian residents of the area and US nationals andinterests. The penetration, the beginnings of which one is seeing, is not of the cadres of the Al Qaeda andthe IIF, but of their influence on the terrorist operations in the area.

To what extent, are the PLO and other organisations allied to it  privy to this penetration? Are theycovertly encouraging this, while overtly continuing to maintain a distance from it? Yasser Arafat and otherPLO leaders have strongly condemned the attack on the Americans, the first of its kind during the last threeyears, but to what extent is their condemnation genuine and to what extent is it an eye-wash similar to whatGen.Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is adept at doing to India -- overtly condemning acts of terrorism in India,but covertly sponsoring them?

In a commentary on the PLO's condemnation of the Gaza ambush of the Americans, Itamar Marcus of thePalestine Media Watch (PMW) draws attention to what he vividly describes as the duplicity of the PLO vis-a-visthe Americans for many years.  He says:

"In its English statements, the PA presents itself as an American ally, while its Arabic messagesincite its people to hate and kill Americans. Never has this hypocrisy been more striking than today, afterthe Palestinian ambush that targeted and killed three American diplomats in the Gaza Strip. The official PArushed to condemn the attack -- even as the PA-controlled media continues its relentless campaign ofanti-American indoctrination. 

"During the war in Iraq, the PA actively endorsed the killing of Americans, and even produced a musicvideo celebrating the deaths of US soldiers that was broadcast repeatedly on official PA TV.  In themonths before the Iraq war, the official PA daily published calls to Saddam Hussein to turn Iraq into agraveyard for American soldiers.  At a pro-Iraq rally they "praised the role of Iraq and the CommanderSaddam Hussein, and stressed that Iraq’s land will be a graveyard for the American soldiers..." [AlHayat Al Jadida, Dec. 19, 2002] Since the war, hatred of the USA has continued unabated in the officialand tightly-controlled PA media.  This morning’s political cartoon in the official daily Al Hayat AlJadida attacks the US for trying to "paint" the entire world American."

Even though the PLO, the Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade etc continue to overtlymaintain a distance from the Al Qaeda and the IIF, it is becoming disturbingly clear that covertly they areincreasingly following the anti-American and anti-Israeli agenda of the IIF. Its impact on the jihaditerrorist situation has to be carefully monitored not only by Israel, but also by India and other victims ofjihadi terrorism. 

(B. Raman,  is Additional Secretary (retd), CabinetSecretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor,Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. He is at present in Jerusalem)