Radical Islam in Gaza

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Apr 22, 2011 Palestine
[Map of the Gaza Strip. Image from theodora.com] [Map of the Gaza Strip. Image from theodora.com]

Radical Islam in Gaza

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[Below is the latest from the International Crisis Group (ICG) on the Gaza Strip. For the full ICG report, click here.]

Radical Islam in Gaza

Executive Summary

The recent Israel-Hamas escalation returns a spotlight to Gaza and the Islamist movement’s relationship with more militant organisations. Gaza arouses multiple concerns: does Hamas seeks to impose religious law; has its purported Islamisation stimulated growth of Salafi-Jihadi groups; and will al-Qaeda offshoots find a foothold there? Hamas faces competition from more radical Islamist groups, though their numbers are few, organisation poor, achievements against Israel so far minor and chances of threatening Gaza’s government slight. The significance of Gaza’s Salafi-Jihadis is less military capability than constraints they impose on Hamas: they are an ideological challenge; they appeal to members of its military wing, a powerful constituency; through attacks within and from Gaza, they threaten security; by criticising Hamas for not fighting Israel or implementing Sharia, they exert pressure for more militancy and Islamisation. The policy of isolating Gaza and ignoring Hamas exacerbates this problem. As the international community seeks new ways to address political Islam in the Arab upheaval’s wake, Gaza is not the worst place to start.

In the last few years, Hamas has faced new Islamist challengers in Gaza. They are groups of militants, known as Salafi-Jihadis, who adhere to a strict interpretation of Islamic law and see themselves not as liberators of Palestine but as part of a global movement of armed fighters defending Muslims against non-Muslim enemies, a category many of them believe also includes Shiites and Palestinian secularists. Although their current strength is low, these groups – which are responsible for a sizeable proportion of Gaza-based rocket attacks toward Israel – could well trigger an escalation that, as illustrated in the past week, could have serious consequences for Gaza, Israel and the region as a whole.

Over time, Hamas’s relationship with such militants has shifted from cooperation to antagonism. One of Gaza’s oldest Salafi-Jihadi groups, Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), participated with Hamas and another faction in the 2006 capture of Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit. In the years since, Hamas has cracked down on Jaysh al-Islam and similar groups, acting decisively when it met with anything resembling a direct defiance of its governmental authority. In August 2009, when the spiritual leader of Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of God’s Supporters), a newer Salafi-Jihadi group based in Rafah, denounced Hamas, declared an Islamic Emirate in Palestine, and demanded the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law), Hamas brutally confronted it, resulting in more than two dozen deaths, 100 injuries and the group’s near total elimination.

Hamas’s policy since then has been one of containment, directed not only at Salafi-Jihadi militants, who are arrested when caught violating the ceasefire it until recently had been upholding, but also at Hamas members who sympathise with these groups. Most Salafi-Jihadis in Gaza are young, low-ranking former members of the military wings of established factions, primarily Hamas and Islamic Jihad but also the Popular Resistance Committees and Fatah. Reasons for their defections vary, but the majority state that primary among their sources of dissatisfaction with Hamas were its participation in the 2006 legislative elections, acquiescence to ceasefires with Israel and failure after taking over Gaza to implement Sharia.

The influence of Salafi-Jihadis is not prominent, but nor is it negligible. They accuse Hamas of laxity in enforcing religious mores, a charge that resonates with many movement supporters and leads the government to greater determination in applying Islamic law. At the same time, the exigencies of governing, hope of increasing diplomatic ties and pressure from many Gazans, human rights activists and Westerners pull in an opposite direction. The result has been a zigzagging policy in which Islamising decisions are announced, at times retracted when citizens object, and on occasion nonetheless enforced. More worrying has been a series of bombings, shootings, burnings and lootings aimed at targets that appear un-Islamic and for which no suspect has been publicly tried. In many cases, it is still unclear who or what was behind them. Some suspect Salafi-Jihadi groups, others Hamas’s more militant members, who were thought difficult to reprimand while the government faced criticism for imposing a ceasefire – now broken – that had neither convinced Israel to lift its closure of Gaza’s borders nor ended the Islamist movement’s diplomatic isolation.

The international community’s policy of snubbing Hamas and isolating Gaza has been misguided from the outset, for reasons Crisis Group long has enumerated. Besides condemning Gazans to a life of scarcity, it has not weakened the Islamist movement, loosened its grip over Gaza, bolstered Fatah or advanced the peace process. To that, one must add the assist provided to Salafi-Jihadis, who benefit from both Gaza’s lack of exposure to the outside world and the apparent futility of Hamas’s strategy of seeking greater engagement with the international community, restraining – until recently – attacks against Israel and limiting Islamising policies advocated by more zealous leaders. There is no guarantee that engaging Hamas politically and normalising the situation in Gaza would lead the Islamist movement to greater pragmatism or diminish the appeal of more radical alternatives. But it is worth the try.

President Mubarak’s ouster likely will be followed by a revision of Egypt’s approach toward Gaza – notably a significant loosening of the border closure and improved relations with Hamas. This would appear to be the natural consequence of the eventual election of a more representative, accountable government that better reflects the views of a citizenry dismayed by the former regime’s policies. Such a shift should be seen as an opportunity for others – Europeans and Americans in particular – to revisit their own assumptions. And to understand that the alternative to Hamas in Gaza is not only or necessarily Fatah. It also is the more radical Islamist groups they have every interest in combating.

Middle East No. 104

Gaza City/Ramallah/Jerusalem/Brussels, 29 March 2011

International Crisis Group
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Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412