Author: Joshua Hammer
Publication: www.stacks.msnbc.com
Date: April 6, 2001
A leading member of the Islamic
Jihad explains his group's attacks on civilians and why he believes some
Jews can stay in Israel
For an avowed militant who has dedicated
his life to the destruction of the state of Israel, Sheik Abdullah al-Shami
could hardly appear more affable. Ushering a pair of visitors into his
headquarters on the fifth floor of a nondescript office building in Gaza
City, the fortyish leader of Islamic Jihad's political wing smiles warmly,
eyes twinkling behind his gold- framed glasses.
"How was your journey?" he asks,
proffering glasses of Coke and settling back on the couch for a chat. But
his expression turns steely as the subject turns to the intifada and the
leading role that his radical Islamic group has taken in the campaign of
violence against Israel. "First we concentrated on military operations
against soldiers and against settlers who had built their homes on our
territory," Shami says. "But because the Israelis have declared war against
all of the Palestinian people, we now consider all Israelis targets."
Israel is taking that warning seriously.
After a period of dormancy, Islamic Jihad and its radical partner Hamas
have reemerged during the past three months as Israel's most implacable
enemies. In one March week alone, the hard-line groups dispatched five
suicide bombers into Israel: one, a student at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah,
insinuated himself into a group of Israeli teenagers waiting at a bus stop
near Netanya, then blew himself up with a nail bomb concealed under his
coat, killing two teenage boys along with himself.
Steadfast in their rejection of
territorial compromise with Israel, Hamas and Islamic Jihad also mean potential
trouble for Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. Seeking a way to perpetuate
the intifada last fall, Arafat freed more than 100 Hamas and Islamic Jihad
zealots from Palestinian jails. But now the Palestinian leader has become
the radicals' hostage, incapable of controlling them. And as moderate Palestinian
and Israeli leaders search for ways to jump-start the peace process, their
biggest obstacle may be the hundreds of well-armed cadres now at large
in the West Bank and Gaza. "They are protectors and defenders of the Palestinian
people," says the sheik, framed by a huge Islamic Jihad banner displaying
the group's logo: the black barrels of twin Kalashnikov rifles protruding
from the golden Dome of the Rock.
That's a label that Shami also wears
proudly. In an hour-long conversation with NEWSWEEK, the tall, avuncular
sheik spoke candidly about his tumultuous two decades at the forefront
of the Mideast's most militant Islamic organization. Dressed austerely
in a simple gray robe and white cotton skull cap, Shami sat upright, on
the edge of his couch as he traced a journey that began when he was a student
activist at Cairo University in the 1970s. "I was one of the founders of
the movement," he says proudly.
Shami spent five years in and out
of Israeli prisons during the intifada years of the late 1980s. After a
series of attacks against Israel in 1992, the government of Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin packed him and other militants into buses and deported them
to Beirut. There, he became an admirer of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement,
remaining in Lebanon until the signing of the Oslo Peace Accord in 1993.
Returning to Gaza, he agitated against
the peace deal and called for more attacks against Israel. He was locked
up nine times by the Palestinian Authority, the last time in May 2000,
when he was held for a month. "When your enemy arrests you it's an honor,"
he says. "But when your brother arrests you, and you feel you've been protecting
him, it's very hard."
Shami's time in prison has not softened
him. Rejecting Israel's right to exist, he implies that Arafat betrayed
the cause for trading away parts of historic Palestine for peace.
Shami's time in prison has not softened
him. Rejecting Israel's right to exist, he implies that Arafat betrayed
the cause for trading away parts of historic Palestine for peace. "I told
him that his way was wrong but he refused to listen to me," he says. "He
put me in prison instead."
Nor does he offer any apologies
for the campaign of violence that Islamic Jihad is carrying out against
Israeli civilian targets. "If somebody comes to your home uninvited, should
you smile at him?" he says. Shami stresses that he does not advocate the
total expulsion of the Jews from the region: "The Jews who were here before
1948 have a right to stay on the land, but those who came later, such as
these Russian immigrants, have no relationship to the land, and we will
not allow it."
Although Shami says he takes no
part in military strategy and insists he has no communication with Islamic
Jihad guerrillas, he is clearly in the loop. Asked about last week's mortar
attack on a Jewish settlement in Gaza by a group that called itself "Hezbollah
Palestine," the sheik denied that the militant Lebanese group-which specialized
in such attacks against Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon-had established
a presence in Gaza. "We don't need Hezbollah here," he said. "The settlers
are a very easy target for us. It's not like Lebanon, where the Israeli
targets were far away, and heavy weapons were needed. The settlers are
very close to us, and we can fight them with the light weapons we have."
The Sharon government, meanwhile,
is desperately searching for ways to strike back. Last week the Israeli
Defense Force unleashed a series of counterattacks in the West Bank and
Gaza against suspected key leaders of the intifada-including one of the
top military commanders of Islamic Jihad. Shortly after noon on Tuesday,
an IDF Apache helicopter swept down over the Gaza Strip town of Rafah from
the sea and fired three missiles at a car driven by Mohammed Attiya Abed
el-Al, 27, incinerating the vehicle and killing him instantly. Abed was
described by Israeli sources as a senior terrorist responsible for a string
of deadly attacks against Jews.
Shami acknowledges that Israelis
were right to consider him a threat. "He had a relationship with the military
wing of Islamic Jihad," acknowledges the sheik, "He was one of the main
defenders."
On Thursday, Israeli forces struck
again, killing another Islamic Jihad military figure, Iyhad Hardan, with
a booby trap planted inside a telephone booth near the West Bank town of
Jenin.
The calling of afternoon prayers
from a nearby mosque is Shami's cue to wrap things up. Escorting his visitors
to the door, the sheik says that he and his confreres are prepared for
a protracted war. "We will finish the struggle when we expel the occupiers,"
he vows, shaking hands as the muezzin wails the verses of the Quran. "We
will continue however long it takes." Both Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat
will have to reckon with that fearsome dedication.
