Israel as an Al-Qa`ida Target: Sorting Rhetoric From Reality
By Matthew Levitt
A variety of groups in the Palestinian Territories claim to be affiliated with or inspired by al-Qa`ida. None of these groups, however, have been welcomed into the al-Qa`ida franchise. Moreover, this bottom up phenomenon where local Palestinian groups reach out to al-Qa`ida is not matched by a top down effort by al-Qa`ida’s core leadership or even its established affiliates to create an official al-Qa`ida faction in the Palestinian Territories. Nevertheless, in nearly all of al-Qa`ida’s public statements, the liberation of Palestine is a goal and Israel is denounced as an enemy. Al-Qa`ida’s extensive anti-Israel rhetoric, however, is not matched with the parallel operational focus on targeting Israel.
Instead, it appears that Palestine is employed as a useful lightening rod through which al-Qa`ida can tap into the emotional attachment of Muslims and Arabs worldwide. The place of Palestine and Israel in al-Qa`ida’s speeches and operations is shaped by its need to construct narratives, often focused on specific populations and conflicts, that support its radical and violent agenda. To do this, it must place conflicts throughout the world that involve Muslims into a singular, radical narrative in which Islam in general and Muslims in particular must defend themselves from Western aggression. For al-Qa`ida, the Palestinian cause is a paradigmatic example of this phenomenon. Since the Israel-Palestine conflict is perhaps the single most animating regional conflict for many Arabs and Muslims, its resonanceprovides al-Qa`ida with a powerful rhetorical tool for radicalization, recruitment, and fundraising.
In an article that appears in the latest volume of CTC Sentinel, the online journal of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (where I am an associate fellow), I demonstrate that while al-Qa`ida has always been interested in the Palestinian issue there is a remarkable gap between al-Qa`ida’s rhetoric and its operations targeting Israel. Those few attacks that al-Qa`ida has conducted against Israeli and Jewish targets have been small-scale and half-hearted.
The full article is available here.
