By
creating a shaheed (martyr) through the
assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Yassin,
Israel may have signaled a war not only against all
Palestinians, but against all Islam. This is the essence
of the "clash of civilizations" as dreamed by American
neo-conservatives and endorsed by the Likud Party in
Israel.
Sharon's 'final
solution' Beirut in 1982 is the blueprint for the
current strategy of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
in Gaza and the West Bank. The objectives are
straightforward: to destroy the Palestinian Authority
(PA); to prevent the emergence of any credible, secular
Palestinian leadership; to perpetuate chaos in the West
Bank; and then to apply "transfer", expelling the
indigenous Palestinian population to Jordan or, better
yet, to an Iraq under American watch. Since 2001,
everything in Palestine has been subjected to a hellish
cycle of violence: a Sharon provocation is followed by a
string of suicide bombings, which is followed by revenge
attacks. The second intifada, the destruction of Yasser
Arafat's government infrastructure, the massacre at the
Jenin refugee camp, Arafat's house arrest - all these
developments are hostage to the same cycle and serve the
same logic: the destruction not only of Arafat and the
secular, nationalist PA, but also of any hope of a
Palestinian state. The assassination of Yassin is
designed to increase the pressure.
In the eyes
of Israel and the United States, Yassin is a terrorist.
For the Arab and Muslim world, he is a resistance
fighter and a spiritual leader. Early this year, Yassin
told the German media that Hamas was ready to accept a
"temporary peace if a Palestinian state is created in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip". Hamas up to then had
wanted a Muslim state from the Mediterranean to the
Jordan River and denied the right of Israel to exist.
Yassin said Hamas was prepared to stop its operations if
Israel ended the occupation and stopped killing innocent
Palestinians.
On the road to Sharon's "final
solution", the assassination of Yasser Arafat was
supposed to be the final provocation - as Sharon himself
announced it last year. But Palestinian sources tell
Asia Times Online that at the first signs of Hamas
steering toward negotiations, Sharon chose to target
Yassin instead. Sharon knows very well that a Hamas
movement consumed with anger and vowing revenge through
suicide bombings could not be a better enemy to be
fought in all-out war; certainly much more convenient
than a moderate, secular Palestinian government, or
Arafat himself. But now even these considerations are
marginal. Everybody and his neigbor apparently is on
Sharon's hit list.
Anyway, the "elimination" of
Arafat - which would have to be approved by Washington -
remains the icing on the cake in Sharon's "final
solution": after that, there will be no moderate,
secular, pragmatic Palestinian leader, or organization
for that matter, with the necessary political authority
to speak or negotiate in the name of all Palestinians.
Islam's response The big question is
how Hamas will rise to the challenge. The first reaction
was predictable: Khaled Mashaal, Hamas political bureau
chief, said that "Sharon has been targeted by
Palestinian resistance men and al-Qassam Brigades, in
retaliation for the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin." Hamas also distributed its own deck of cards -
American-style - with the names of targeted Israeli
officials. But it's crucial to point out that Hamas so
far has not succumbed to the provocation of widening its
targets to include the US. Mashaal said that the focus
remains Israel until the end of the occupation.
Hamas may be originally an Islamic movement. But
this is now also marginal, as far as the wider
Palestinian resistance is concerned. Political and
religious factions alike are now stressing solidarity.
The reaction in the wider Islamic world is much
more complex. The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, promptly
reacted in the name of al-Qaeda, via a letter emailed to
the Arab media. Abu Hafs al-Masri was an al-Qaeda leader
killed in the 2001 American bombing in Afghanistan; the
brigades are now a trademark signature of practically
every al-Qaeda communique to its worldwide cells, as
after the bombings in Madrid. The message reads: "We
call on all the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades to avenge the
sheikh of the Palestinian resistance by striking the
tyrant of the age, America and its allies." The message
calls for "strikes against this Jewish-crusader snake".
Historically, al-Qaeda couldn't care less about the
Palestinian struggle, but the assassination of a Sunni
spiritual leader like Yassin moves the battle up one
notch: for al-Qaeda, now the jihad in Palestine must be
totally integrated with the jihad in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Chechnya, Central Asia and elsewhere.
Top Islamic scholars and spiritual leaders
stress the support of all Muslims for the Palestinian
resistance, with the emphasis on unity. Yassin himself
was betting on increasing political unity between
different Palestinian factions and Lebanese and Iraqi
groups. Sheikh Hamid al-Bitawi, the imam of al-Aqsa
mosque and head of the Palestinian Scholars League,
said: "We the Palestinians will not throw in the towel
for the Zionists. We will not give up ... we are the
natives of this homeland." The mufti of Jerusalem,
Sheikh Ekrema Sabri, stressed the importance of unity of
the Arab world: "If the Arab rulers took a unified
stance, the Israeli occupation would not dare to commit
such crimes against the Palestinians."
But some
key spiritual leaders go one step further. For them,
there's only one answer: jihad - more or less what
al-Qaeda is saying. In Cairo, the Grand Sheikh of
al-Azhar, Mohammad Sayed Tantawi - one of Sunni Islam's
highest authorities - said: "This is a heinous crime
that must not go without punishment."
Sheikh
Yousef al-Qardawi, who conducts his extremely popular
talk show Sharia and Life on Qatar-based
al-Jazeera television, said that "only force and jihad
work with those aggressors". He insisted that "all
Palestinians should now unify ranks and heal rifts to
avenge the killing of Yassin and his companions".
Al-Qardawi added that Yassin as a resistance leader was
a powerful symbol not only for Palestinians, but to 1.3
billion Muslims all over the world. And right on cue,
from Najaf in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the
supreme Shi'ite religious authority, called on "the sons
of the Arab and Islamic nations to close ranks, unite
and work hard for the liberation of the usurped land and
restore rights".
Yet the key question remains:
how powerful will be moderate Islam's answer to Sharon's
provocation? The assassination may be leading to
something unforeseen in the Islamic world - and indeed
very powerful: a convergence of all national liberation
movements against occupation. This has nothing to do
with violent, global jihad. Call it peaceful jihad - but
a jihad none the less.
Silent
Washington From calls to unity to calls to jihad,
the Islamic world is reading the assassination of Sheikh
Yassin as the ultimate provocation to force Palestinian
despair to the limit, creating appalling conditions that
would allow Israel to break the will of Palestinian
civil society. In this context, the silence of approval
in Washington is being interpreted by the Islamic world
as another nail in the coffin of American credibility
and moral leadership in the "war on terror". There could
not be better propaganda for al-Qaeda, the International
Islamic Front and the global jihad.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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