Olivier Guitta looks at Al Qaeda’s recent activities within Gaza, and finds that not only do they have plans to launch major attacks against Israel within the next few years, but an Al Qaeda attack has been foiled very recently.
Following my post and article on Al Qaeda’s master plan to attack Israel in the next three years, a Jordanian intelligence source confirmed to Al Hayat that a major Al Qaeda attack was just very recently foiled in Gaza.
This source also confirmed that Al Qaeda has been expanding in Gaza and tried to penetrate the West Bank but with less success there.A Palestinian Islamist also underlined that the recruitment of the Al Qaeda’s Palestinian cell was undertaken via Internet, which was confirmed by Jordanian intelligence services. This cell is composed of about ten individuals who are very cautious and use women to transmit messages and weapons.
Interestingly enough, this operational mode is quite similar to what happened in Jordan.
Interestingly, there seems to be some bad blood between Al Qaeda and Hamas, and al Qaeda may be picking up some former Hamas terrorists who believe that the politicians in Hamas are not sufficiently gung ho about terrorizing the Israelis.
Another huge consequence of Al Qaeda’s increasing role is going to be its relations with Hamas. Al Zawahiri’s recent message to Hamas encouraging continuing their attack on Israel has been received coldly by some in the Hamas leadership. It seems as though there might be a fracture between the “political wing” and the military wing of Hamas. In fact, Hamas has been criticized by some of its own for running in the elections and implementing a “truce” with Israel.
That’s why Al Qaeda is using this perceived weakness to recruit among disenchanted hardcore Hamas members. According to Al Hayat, about 200 Hamas members have conducted negotiations with a foreign organization, most probably Al Qaeda. Coincidentally or not, Al Mokdad Omar wrote a letter to Palestinian Islamist to encourage them to join Al Qaeda.
It’s hard for me to understand why anyone in Hamas feels that their leadership is not as dedicated towards terrorism as they once were, since everything we’ve heard from Hamas since their takeover of the Palestinian Authority shows that they still have the goal of wiping out Israel, but I don’t pretend to be able to get into the heads of serial killers who beleive if they murder innocent civilians they’ll be rewarded in heaven. In any case, Al Qaeda’s presence in Gaza is a very serious problem that the Israelis are going to need to aggressively deal with.
