Scott Sanford of Jihadica has helpfully collected and summarized some of the early reactions from salafi extremists to last Friday’s confrontation between Hamas and the salafist Jund Ansar Allah group in southern Gaza.
By the application of vastly superior force, Hamas won that battle, though at some cost. The JAA’s leader and several of its fighters were killed and the movement has now, presumably been effectively suppressed.
One of the salafist strategists Sanford cites is Akram al-Hijazi, a Palestinian who yesterday launched this tirade against the Hamas leadership on Al-Fallujah Islamic Forums yesterday.
Three days ago, Hijazi posted this tirade against Hamas on the forum.
I haven’t had time to read these texts in detail. But Sanford tells us that Hijazi argues that the present Hamas leadership has abandoned the “true path” that was established by Hamas founder Skeikh Ahmed Yassin and the movement’s second leader in Gaza, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi.
In this way, Hijazi is making a play for the sympathies of Hamas rank-and-filers who may be disgruntled with the diplomatic-political tack taken by the current leadership.
Of course, Yassin was the originator of the idea that it would be a good idea to have a “hudna” (truce) of some possibly lengthy period with Israel, during which the Palestinians could run their own government in the post-liberation territories of the West Bank (including E. Jerusalem) and Gaza. That is still the version of the “two-state solution” advocated by the Hamas leadership.
Yassin also cooperated with Israel in several ways during his life. Much more than Meshaal and the rest of the current leadership ever have! So the idea that salafists somehow represent the “true path” of Yassin does not have a lot of prima facie credibility…
However, the potential attractiveness of the salafists to Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere– who see themselves confined by Israel in the open-air prisons that are what Gaza and the West Bank have become, and who see their just claims for liberation, national independence, and the settlement of decades-old refugee claims all just endlessly denied, derided, and shunted aside as Israel’s colonization of the West Bank continues apace– cannot for a moment be denied.
Nehemiah Strasler had a good piece in Haaretz on this topic on Tuesday.
He wrote,
- During the entire period of our rule in the territories, we have destroyed the existing leadership, which led to the rise of more extreme leaders. We destroyed the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat, who had agreed to a two-state solution and was capable of “delivering the goods.” And we brought about Hamas’ seizure of the Gaza Strip. Now we are cultivating the third stage: Al-Qaida.
That’s because on our side people don’t want to understand that when the oppression increases and there is nothing to lose, the adversary doesn’t surrender and grovel. Just the opposite. He becomes more radical. Hate wins out and the desire for revenge becomes the only hope. So when poverty in Gaza increases and unemployment is on the rise, Al-Qaida will take control. It will happen either in a coup or through elections, and we will long for that terrible Hamas.
—
By the way, just a small geographic note. I know there’s a Fallujah in Iraq, and there’s also a Fallujah in southern Palestine (maybe now in Israel?), which was one of the limits that the Egyptian army reached in 1948. Was one of them named after the other? Does anyone know?
Helena,
The word “Falluja” is derived from the Arabic root falaja, which means “to cleave”. As a toponym, it would refer to some feature of the land, bisected by a river (as in the case of Iraqi Falluja).
Thanks, Qifa!
Nathan Brown wrote me as follows:
Here’s what I understand about Al-Faluja.
* The Palestinian village may have been named after the Iraqi one. (See here)
* The Palestinian village is destroyed but its name lives on in the name of a prominent traffic junction (Plugot) where the north-south road to Beersheva intersects with the east-west route between Gaza and Hebron.
* And the Israeli town of Kiryat Gat (where Intel has a major plant) is immediately adjacent.
… So I went to the URL Nathan sent and learned that the number of Plestinians made refugees from there in 1948 was 5,417 (the whole population.)
Also, these additional details:
“At one time, al-Faluja was known by Zurayq al-Khandaq, later, the village was named after the Iraqi Sufi master al-Shahab al-Din al-Faluji, whose shrine remain standing…
al-Faluja had two schools:- the 1st was an elementary school for boys founded in 1919, and in 1947 it had an enrollment of 520 boys; the 2nd school was for girls founded in 1940, and in 1943 it had an enrollment of 83 girls…
The village had a local village council founded in 1922, which administrate the village’s social and economic affairs; a shrine for the Iraqi Sufi al-Shaykh al-Faluji; an one large mosque with three domed halls…
More on Palestinian Faluja (aka “Plugot”) is on Wikipedia.
So I think we have an answer: Iraqi Falluja came first.
I do think some Israelis go and visit the Sufi mystic’s shrine but I need to investigate that further.
So thanks, Nathan, too!
Wikimapia shows that there’s a big Givati brigade base just northwest of Plugot Junction. I’m thinking the wooded area south of the base (west of the junction) that has paths snaking through it may have been where the village stood. But I don’t know where to look for the shrine.
Thanks for the information about Palestinian Falluja, Helena. That’s really interesting.
don’t want to understand that when the oppression increases and there is nothing to lose, the adversary doesn’t surrender and grovel. Just the opposite. He becomes more radical. Hate wins out and the desire for revenge becomes the only hope. So when poverty in Gaza increases and unemployment is on the rise, Al-Qaida will take control. It will happen either in a coup or through elections, and we will long for that terrible Hamas.
I find that the precise dilemma we have with antibiotics, the bad bacteria keeps getting stronger and more resistant, and that is part of the reason the medical community tries to limit the use of antibiotics. The problem is that in the short term antibiotics is the right medicine, and once we survive the short term we face the long term negatives. But who of us refuses to use antibiotics? Who is so lucky to not have to worry about the immediate.
The medical community has only one pragmatic compromise, when you take antibiotics you take them to completion, not until you feel better, and the label says that clearly, you must finish the dose. There is no nonsense about proportional response, the root of all evil.
There was also an Iraq-Suidan about six kilometers northwest of the present day Plugot Junction where the British built a Taggart Fort and from which the Egyptian army shelled Kibbutz Negba in 1948. So, I’d say there is a very good chance that Falluja in Palestine was named after Falluja in Iraq.
For what it’s worth, the town next to where I live has a large family whose surname is al-Iraqi.
Any time people try to dehumanize other people whose actions they disagree with by using zoomorphic or pathological metaphors about those other people it is a spiritual/existential tragedy– and one, moreover, that prepares the way for the kinds of genocidal actions that are tragic in the material world.
“Bad bacteria”???
Titus, please do not spread your hateful views here any more.