Salafi Jihadist groups in Gaza Strip as instrument of restoring regional balance

By Alexander Ignatenko, President of the Institute on Religion and Policy, member of Presidential Council for Cooperation with Religious Organisations

(presentation as part of the discussion “Conflict Settlement a Way to Regional Balance”)

Starting from the mid-2000s in the Gaza Strip, Islamist groups began to show political activity (or rather active political rhetoric) that used the Al Qaida combination in their names. For example, there appeared  Alwiyat al-Jihad fi Ard al-Ribat. Al-Jinah al-Askari. Tanzim al-Qaeda - Filastine, " (The Jihad Brigades in the Land of the Outpost -The Military wing - Al-Qaeda Cell, Palestine). In 2006, Al Qaeda Cell in Palestine made headlines; in March that year Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), leader of the Palestinian Authority, said Al Qaeda was active in Gaza and the West Bank.

The origin of these groups is rather obscure. In December 2002, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accused Israeli security services (Mossad) of creating a false Al Qaeda cell in Gaza and sending people there who were instructed to behave as is they were Osama Bin Laden’s fighters. We are mentioning these groups here because their ideology could be nothing but Salafi jihadism, since they adopted Al Qaeda’s ideology together with its brand.

At the same time, groups and organizations sprouted in Palestine  (tanzimat, jama’at) which did not associate themselves with Al Qaeda or Bin Laden but identified themselves as Salafi Jihadist groups:

-    Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), which originated in 2005 in the Palestinian family of Daghmush;

-    Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Companions of God‎), based at the Ibn-Taymiyah mosque in Rafah, proclaimed an 'Islamic emirate' in Gaza, which survived only one day ( Augist 15, 2009);

-    Ansar al-Sunnah (Group of the Followers of Sunnah);

-    Jama'at al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad (The Monotheism and Jihad Group in Jerusalem), Bayt al-Maqdis;

-    Lion's Den in Palestine (Ma’sada al-Mujahideen fi Filastine)

Our hypothesis is that these Salafi jihadist groups emerged as a reaction to Iran’s infiltration of the Arab world. It was during that period that Iran expanded its influence to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen, directly or through local Shiites, which even led to clashes between Huthi rebels  and Saudi armed forces in 2009.
Salafi groups and Gaza emerged as Sunni organizational and ideological counterbalance  (wazi’ tanzimi sunni) to Iranian political interference in Gaza. The Salafi religious groups, earlier carefully implanted in Palestine, were reorganized as political and religious Salafi  jihadist groups.

Salafism and Salafi jihadism proved a perfect ideological tool for anti-Iranian mobilization. The Salafi heritage includes a carefully established and powerful anti-Shiite potential aimed against what modern Salafists call “Rafidites” and “Sefevides” (meaning Shiites and Iranians).

Salafist classic Ibn-Taymiyah (1268-1323) wrote, in addition to anti-Shiite fatwas, an anti-Shiite 4,500-page treatise The Pathway of al-Sunnah (Minhaj Ul Sunnah Al-nabawiah Fi Naqdi Kalam Al-shi'a Al-qadariah), an extensive refutation of the Shia sect.

It is hard to overlook that conflicts in the region have grown and become more complex. In addition to the “eternal” Israeli-Palestininan confrontation, there appeared “new-generation” conflicts. Gaza became a kind of laboratory for creating new conflicts. I am referring to the battle at the Ibn-Taymiyah Mosque in Rafah on August 15, 2009, when Hamas fighters destroyed the leadership of Jund Ansar Allah, which declared the Islamic Emirate of Gaza on that day.

On the whole, all Salafi jihadist  groups share anti-Hamas rhetoric, accusing that Sunni group of deviating from Islam. Therefore, in addition to the growing Shiite-Sunni tensions in the region, conflicts between the Sunni also grow, which threatens the regional balance reached with such painstaking effort.