Hamas, Al-Qaeda and the Islamisation of the Palestinian Cause

Under Hamas’s rule, a radical Islamic entity has been established in Gaza, opposed to the national-secular Fatah movement, and pro al-Qaida groups have started to emerge and carry out attacks against western targets in the Strip. Hamas’s take-over of the Gaza Strip has led to the establishment of a radical Islamic entity that practices terrorism to achieve its goals and that has close connections with the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ in Egypt (whose Palestinian branch is Hamas) and Iran, the radical Islamic Shiite state. Hamas is challenging and threatening the Palestinians’ secular nationalist territorial aims and striving to implement its Pan-Islamic religious ideology in accordance with the idea of the Islamic Ummah (the seamless nation of Islam). This entity is now in violent conflict with Abu Mazen, Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, who represents the national-secular Fatah movement. Due to this, Abu Mazen and official Palestinian and Egyptian media use terms such as ‘Islamic Emirate’ when describing the new entity that has been established in the Gaza Strip. Under Hamas’s rule in Gaza, organisations identified with the global Jihad have started to emerge and carry out attacks against western targets in the Gaza Strip. These radical entities form a new pro-al-Qaeda and global-Jihad-oriented conglomerate that operates in the Gaza Strip with no interference from Hamas, that considers them a spearhead committed to maintaining the ‘flame’ of Jihad against Israel and ‘purifying’ Palestinian society from the West’s presence and influence. Hamas’s activities make it evident that its strategic objective within the Palestinian arena is to take over and replace the PLO in the leadership of the Palestinian National Movement