Terrorists Talking Away

Al Qaeda has released yet another video, this time Ayman al-Zawahiri appears, and he's appealing for Gaza to rise up against Israel and destroy Israel, and attack Jewish and American interests around the world. I wonder if Zawahiri has been paying attention to what's happened each and every time Hamas and the other jihadis have attempted mass casualty attacks - they've been hunted down like rabid dogs and eliminated by Israel's security forces.

Al-Qaida deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims in a new audiotape released Monday to strike Jewish and American targets in revenge for Israel's recent offensive in the Gaza Strip.

The al-Zawahri tape came on the heels of a message from Osama bin Laden, who called for a holy war to liberate the Palestinian territories. Together, the two messages appeared to be a more direct push by the terror network's leadership to use widespread anger over the Gaza violence to whip up support.

Israel's weeklong offensive in Gaza ended in early March. It was launched in an attempt to put down Palestinian militants firing rockets against nearby the Israeli town of Sderot and city of Ashkelon. The Israeli assault killed more than 120 people, including many civilians. Three Israelis also were killed.

Bin Laden and al-Zawahri have frequently referred to the Palestinian cause in their past messages, but usually in broader terms of liberating Jerusalem and denouncing Israeli violence. Their latest calls for attacks, however, had a more immediate and urgent tone.

The string of messages has raised concerns that al-Qaida could be planning new attacks in the West — or is seeking to inspire its sympathizers to carry out violence. In another message last week, bin Laden warned of a "severe" reaction against Europe after Danish papers published a cartoon seen as insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

The AP makes no attempt to actually quantify how many terrorists were killed, and I'd suggest that the number of terrorists eliminated by Israel was far greater than the number of Palestinian civilians killed. It's yet another sign of AP bias against Israel. It also ignores the fact that Israel has been bombarded by literally thousands of kassam rockets and mortars since 2005, when Israel disengaged and left Gaza to its own devices. Gaza is wholly in Hamas's hands, and had Hamas intended to build a useful and productive society, it could have done so.

It instead engaged in a war against Israel, using the Palestinian population as human shields to carry out attacks against Israel and to use the civilians injured and killed as propaganda tools to bludgeon Israel in the media war since they aren't successful in the military arena.

The video is also notable because Zawahiri is essentially admitting there are few places in the world where al Qaeda and other jihadi groups have safe havens from which to launch operations and relying upon the old standby of the Palestinians is about all that they have left. He also attacked Egypt in the tape, for what he claimed was collusion with Israel for shutting the border with Gaza.

The Egyptian-born Al-Zawahri accused Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak of colluding with Israel in the siege of Gaza. Egypt has sealed its border with the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian militant group Hamas took over the territory last year.

He said Mubarak "repeats the same dirty role" as the Lebanese Phalangists — a Christian militia that was allied with Israel in Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war and was blamed in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in the Beirut camps of Sabra and Shatila.

"The roles are the same, even if the faces change — the same betrayal even if the names have changed," said al-Zawahri.

Zawahiri and Egypt have a long history, as Zawahiri was a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad before becoming al Qaeda's number two thug. Expect the Muslim Brotherhood to take up Zawahiri's call in Egypt and engage in more terrorism there, particularly in the Sinai or at key tourist locations, as had been done in the past.

Elsewhere, Hizbullah is going to be holding rallies in Lebanon to mark the 40th day since Imad Mughniyeh, aka Mugh the Thug, was dispatched in a car bombing. Israel's security forces are on alert as a result.

This, however, is just rich. Fatah claims that they should not have signed the memo of understanding between itself and fellow terrorist group Hamas. It was a misunderstanding that Fatah officials signed off on the plan. I'll say. They can't agree on a power sharing arrangement that works for both terror groups:

Abbas has said repeatedly that he would not negotiate a new power-sharing deal with Hamas unless it first steps aside in Gaza. Despite Hamas' refusal to do so, Abbas sent a representative, former Deputy Palestinian Prime Minister Azzam al-Ahmed, to Yemen to explore the reconciliation proposal - apparently to avoid being seen as inflexible on trying to mend the deep internal Palestinian rift.

On Sunday, al-Ahmed and a senior Hamas representative, Moussa Abu Marzouk, signed a declaration that both accept a Yemeni initiative calling for the creation of a national unity government and the rebuilding of security forces loyal to that government instead of factions.

Of course, Israel says that any deal with the Palestinian Authority depends on whether the PA fights terrorism or not. Well, given that Hamas and Fatah are both terrorist groups and Fatah and Hamas are in talks to re-form the Authority, I'd suggest that there's no chance for peace. You might get occasional truces, but they're nothing more than a hudna - the strategic pause enabling the terrorists to prepare for a coming war with Israel.

Given how the terror threat hasn't diminished, it's way too soon to consider dismantling checkpoints in the West Bank.

Barry Rubin has a good op-ed, which mirrors many of my own writings - namely that the Palestinian terror groups all continually misread the situation. They think that Israel's reluctance to use force is a sign of weakness, and that they overestimate their capabilities (though one should never overestimate their capacity to slaughter innocents).