A trial for Osama bin Laden would be a media circus, says Paul Cruickshank, but would be good for the United States.

Paul Cruickshank
Special to CNN

The announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of the 9/11 attacks will soon be moved to New York to face trial in a federal court will be welcomed by some Americans as finally starting the process of bringing the perpetrators of these attacks to justice.

To date, not one person has been convicted for the attacks. But it also will be a reminder that their boss, the man most responsible for killing 3,000 civilians - the majority of them Americans but many from all around the world - is still at large.

President Obama has stated that it is vitally important for the country to put some of the controversial policies of the last eight years behind it. While the forthcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several figures allegedly involved in plotting the 9/11 attacks in New York will be helpful, nothing would help more than if Osama bin Laden were captured, afforded full due process and put on trial.

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A Pakistani soldier pictured during operations against militants in June.

Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times

It is crunch time on Afghanistan, so here’s my vote: We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan.

I base this conclusion on three principles. First, when I think back on all the moments of progress in that part of the world — all the times when a key player in the Middle East actually did something that put a smile on my face — all of them have one thing in common: America had nothing to do with it.

America helped build out what they started, but the breakthrough didn’t start with us. We can fan the flames, but the parties themselves have to light the fires of moderation. And whenever we try to do it for them, whenever we want it more than they do, we fail and they languish.

The Camp David peace treaty was not initiated by Jimmy Carter. Rather, the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, went to Jerusalem in 1977 after Israel’s Moshe Dayan held secret talks in Morocco with Sadat aide Hassan Tuhami. Both countries decided that they wanted a separate peace — outside of the Geneva comprehensive framework pushed by Mr. Carter.

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Ex-Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge says he was pushed to raise the terror alert before the 2004 election.

CNN

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge says he successfully countered an effort by senior Bush administration officials to raise the nation's terror alert level in the days before the 2004 presidential vote.

"An election-eve drama was being played out at the highest levels of our government" after Osama bin Laden released a pre-election message critical of President George W. Bush, writes Ridge in his new book, "The Test of Our Times."

Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld strongly advocated raising the security threat level to "orange," even though Ridge believed a threatening message "should not be the sole reason to elevate the threat level."

The former Pennsylvania governor also writes that he saw no reason for the move, which he now calls a bad idea, because additional security precautions had already been taken in advance of the election.

"We certainly didn't believe the tape alone warranted action, and we weren't seeing any additional intelligence that justified it. In fact, we were incredulous," Ridge said of the push. "... I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' "

The idea that an attack might take place had been discussed, he says. "But at this point there was nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm. ... It also seemed possible to me and to others around the table that something could be afoot other than simple concern about the country's safety."

In the end, the threat level was not raised.

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Anderson Cooper discusses Osama Bin Laden's new tape calling for a jihad against Israel with CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen and former CIA officer Gary Berntsen.

Osama bin Laden remains on the run despite a $25 million reward for his capture.

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

The new 22-minute tape posted Wednesday on a radical Islamist Web site is the first one from Osama bin Laden in nine months. On it, the al Qaeda leader urges Muslims to wage jihad against Israel because of its offensive in Gaza.

U.S. counter-terrorism officials had been expecting that bin Laden would release a tape before the 2008 presidential election just as he had done four years earlier.

On October 29, 2004, he released a videotaped address to the American people in which he said that it was irrelevant whether Americans elected Sen. John Kerry or George W. Bush as president. The key issue, as far as he was concerned, was that the United States needed to change its policies in the Muslim world.

Bin Laden, however, made no comments during the 2008 campaign season, and his recent silence has been puzzling.

The likely explanation is the large number of U.S. Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles that have launched multiple strikes in the past year into the tribal areas of Pakistan where al Qaeda is headquartered and where bin Laden is believed to be hiding.

Since the beginning of 2008, there have been at least 30 such missile strikes, according to a count by CNN's Pakistan bureau.

In 2007, there were only four.

Those strikes have killed several al Qaeda leaders, including two on January 1 who were alleged to have had a role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa; strikes that President Bush mentioned in his Tuesday interview with CNN's Larry King.

The ramped-up pace of the Hellfire strikes has clearly interrupted al Qaeda operations and has increased the costs to its leaders of being visible.

But the now 19-day-old Israeli offensive in Gaza would not be something that the al Qaeda leader could be silent about for long.

After September 11, 2001, it became commonplace to say that bin Laden and al Qaeda had only latched on to the issue of Israel and Palestine belatedly.

The most prominent exponents of this view were former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger and incoming Obama deputy chief of staff, Mona Sutphen, who published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine in November 2001 in which they argued that al Qaeda had never made much of the Palestinian issue before 9/11 and was only highlighting it in its recent statements to broaden its base of support in the Muslim world.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as even the most casual reading of bin Laden's most widely distributed pre-9/11 statements demonstrates.

The al Qaeda leader's first public declaration that he was at war with the United States was issued August 23, 1996. In that declaration, he is quite clear about where he stands on the issue of Palestine: "I feel still the pain of [the loss of] Al-Quds in my internal organs." Al Quds, the Arabic word for Jerusalem, is the site of the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest place of pilgrimage in Islam, which was annexed to Israel in 1967.

Bin Laden went on to say that he felt the loss of Jerusalem "like a burning fire in my intestines."

Similarly, in August 1998, when al Qaeda held its first and only news conference to announce the formation of its "World Islamic Front against the Crusader and the Jews," the fatwa that was circulated around the world after the conference concluded: "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do so, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem]."

Bin Laden has a personal connection to the al Aqsa mosque, as his father's construction company was responsible for its restoration in the 1960s. The site hosting the tape from the al Qaeda leader features audio of bin Laden and a picture of that mosque.

So intense are bin Laden's feelings about the Palestinian issue that, according to the 9/11 commission, he wrote Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational commander of the 9/11 attacks, two letters pressing him to move forward the timing of the attacks on Washington and New York to June or July 2001 to coincide with a planned visit to the White House of Israel's then-prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed resisted the pressure.

On Al-Jazeera, in his only television interview after 9/11, bin Laden responded to the notion that he had only recently started to push the Palestinian issue: "That is not true. [I] made a speech in 1986 that urged Muslims to boycott American products [because] the Americans take our money and give it to the Jews so they can kill our children with it in Palestine."

Jamal Ismail, a Palestinian journalist who knew bin Laden in the mid-1980s, remembers that he "was not willing to drink any soft drinks from American companies, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Sprite, 7-Up. He is trying to boycott all American products because he believes that without Americans, Israel cannot exist."

It is significant that al Qaeda's first-ever videotape production, which was posted to the Internet in June 2001, focused heavily on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The tape showed pictures of Israeli soldiers striking a Palestinian woman and of a young Palestinian boy who being shot.

On the videotape, the al Qaeda leader then made the connection explicit between Palestinian suffering and supposed American complicity, saying, "We speak of the American government, but it is in reality an Israeli government."

Bin Laden's conspiratorial reading of the role that the Israel plays in the U.S. government is not credible, but it does represent his deeply held belief that the American and Israeli governments are one and the same.

Might the new bin Laden tape further fan the flames of the Gaza conflict? Unlikely. Hamas has no desire to add to its problems by an association with al Qaeda, a group that it has condemned in the past. For its part, al Qaeda's leaders have regularly criticized Hamas for participating in democratic elections, which they regard as not sanctioned by Islamic law.

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington and at New York University's Center on Law and Security. His most recent book is "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader."

Osama bin Laden, in an undated photo, apparently taped a message calling for jihad against Israel.

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

Osama bin Laden's release of an audio message denouncing Israel's military offensive in Gaza signals the al Qaeda leader's priorities, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen says.

On the tape, which became public Wednesday, bin Laden calls for jihad, or holy war, against Israel in response to its military campaign aimed at stopping Hamas rocket attacks.

It's unknown when the tape was made because the time lag between recording a bin Laden message and releasing it is usually about two weeks, said Bergen, a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington and author of "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader."

Bergen answered questions about the latest message from bin Laden.

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Editor's Note: Tune in to hear more from CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen on AC360° tonight at
10pm ET.

CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen analyzes the relevance and timing of the new Osama bin Laden tape.

U.S. Forces in Afghanistan.

Joe Klein
Time

"Things have gotten a bit hairy," admitted British Lieut. Colonel Graeme Armour as we sat in a dusty, bunkered NATO fortress just outside the city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, a deadly piece of turf along Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan.

A day earlier, two Danish soldiers had been killed and two Brits seriously wounded by roadside bombs. The casualties were coming almost daily now.

And then there were the daily frustrations of Armour's job: training Afghan police officers. Almost all the recruits were illiterate. "They've had no experience at learning," Armour said. "You sit them in a room and try to teach them about police procedures — they start gabbing and knocking about. You talk to them about the rights of women, and they just laugh."

A week earlier, five Afghan police officers trained by Armour were murdered in their beds while defending a nearby checkpoint — possibly by other police officers. Their weapons and ammunition were stolen. "We're not sure of the motivation," Armour said. "They may have gone to join the Taliban or sold the guns in the market."

The war in Afghanistan — the war that President-elect Barack Obama pledged to fight and win — has become an aimless absurdity. It began with a specific target.

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Octavia Nasr
CNN Arab Affairs Editor

In the Arab world, media headlines, editorials and commentaries continue to be very supportive of the U.S. for electing Barack Obama as president. Even the most conservative media, those with known anti-western slant, are sounding positive and offering congratulations.

At the London-based pro-Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an editorial reads, “It is too soon to judge Barack Obama’s ability to handle the economic crisis and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he has already defeated America’s two most powerful institutions, the Clintons and the conservative right wing… He therefore might be able to handle these explosive dossiers if granted the opportunity…” The editorial continued, “Barack Obama will enter history with his competence, abilities, patience and wisdom… We therefore congratulate him for this great success and congratulate the American people for having chosen change.”

In Saudi Arabia’s pro-government Okaz newspaper, Khalaf al-Harbi wrote, “We cannot hide our admiration for the invigorating American spirit that is not blinded by might or corrupted by supremacy. The United States proves one more time that it is always capable of reinventing itself and staying ahead of other countries that cannot show the same degree of dedication and loyalty to their professed principles.”

From Kuwait’s Al-Rai Al-Am, Jaafar Rajab reflected on the Arab tradition of accepting one’s fate instead of reaching for the dream. He wrote, “Nations make their history while we continue to make a history of quicksand!” He then added, “People who know how to read, read the past but live for the future, while people who read the bottom of their coffee cups live in the past!”

The Saudi-owned London-based newspaper Al-Hayat wondered (not really) where al Qaeda is as history is being made. Editor-in-chief Ghassan Charbel wrote, “I have no clue whether bin Laden was up all night in his bunker waiting for the results of the US elections. I have no idea what he might have felt when the son of an African immigrant won the people’s trust to run the top executive job. What did bin Laden think when Obama spoke directly to his people appealing to their minds, feelings and imaginations; inspiring them to resume their dreams and to regain confidence in their ability to change policies and build their futures.”

Charbel explained that Obama’s inspirational qualities are the opposite of bin Laden’s violent and oppressive methods. He then concluded that perhaps what Barack Obama and the US achieved on 11/04/08 is the perfect “attack” against Osama bin Laden and his terrorists’ attacks in New York and Washington in 09/11/01. Charbel described bin Laden as a loser who “has every reason to be upset” right now. The fact that no one has heard from the al Qaeda leader of late is the proof, “He could not be a voter in the US elections. He could not deliver an astounding blow to the land that he had shaken seven years earlier. He could not target any American interests overseas. He failed to send out a message threatening Americans and promising them more attacks.”

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

One person who was supposed to weigh in on the American presidential election is someone we have yet to hear from: Osama bin Laden.

Four years ago the al Qaeda leader appeared in a well-lit videotape addressing himself directly to the American people five days before they voted in the contest between Sen. John Kerry and George Bush. Bin Laden said then that whoever won the election was immaterial as far as al Qaeda was concerned and that instead Americans needed to change their country’s foreign policies in the Muslim world, or face the consequences.

US intelligence officials tracking al Qaeda have been expecting a similar message from the al Qaeda leader in the run-up to this presidential election. Yet, so far, bin Laden has not appeared.
There could be several reasons for this. First, the bin Laden tape might still be in the pipeline and will surface in coming weeks having wended its long way via a chain of couriers from his hideout on the Afghan-Pakistan border to be uploaded to a jihadist website or delivered to an Arab TV station.

Second, several of the sites where al Qaeda traditionally places its propaganda messages have been taken down in past days. The fact that those sites are down may both be an effort to curtail al Qaeda’s messages to the wider world and also make the terrorist organization go back to its traditional method of communications through Arab TV stations, which are easier for American intelligence agencies to stake out and monitor than anonymous jihadist websites.
Third, bin Laden may have concluded that, given the widespread expectation that he would deliver an election-eve tape, that discretion is the better part of valor and for security purposes now is not the time to make an appearance on the world stage.

Fourth, militant targets in the tribal regions have been the subject of some 20 American missile attacks since the summer and that may have spooked the al Qaeda leadership, which has not being the subject of such intense missile strikes previously.

Those attacks are designed not only to disrupt al Qaeda’s operations, but also to increase the radio or phone communications between militants- signals intelligence known as ‘SIGINT’ -that can be traced by American spy agencies, according to US intelligence and administration officials who track al Qaeda.

Nic Robertson | BIO
Senior International Correspondent

There is a new fight against Bin Laden, al Qaeda and their fellow radicals. It’s coming from within Islam and may yet prove the most powerful agent for transforming the Saudi terror leader from radical Islamist Icon to a has-been hero.

Taking down one of his best loved web sites is only the beginning. Much, much more is happening behind the scenes. Muslims angry Bin Laden is giving Islam a bad name are fighting back.

I’m hearing it from guys as diverse as those that fought along side the Al Qaeda leader in the anti Soviet Jihad in Afghanistan to British Pakistani’s frustrated their children are being singled out for ridicule for being un-Islamic by their peers. These Muslims want to do something and they are.

Waseem Mahmood, a British Pakistani helped get a bunch of popular Pakistani pop stars to record a song decrying Bin Laden type terror. It was an instant hit staying at the top of the Pakistani charts for several weeks. He followed up with a SMS, phone text message petition for Pakistanis to sign up if they were against terrorism. More than 60 million did, that’s more than a third of the population, massive when you consider most of us think of Pakistan as a very Conservative Muslim nation. Mahmood is getting ready to grow that number.

A recent Pew Global Attitudes report found in Pakistan more than half the population had negative rather than positive view about al Qaeda and the Taliban. As Bob Dylan said “times they are a changing” and so are attitudes.

What I’m hearing time and again is that Bin Laden and the Egyptian’s like Ayman al Zawahiri who influence him are taking Islam in to the dumps. The world view they offer of a Global Caliphate has little resonance. The way they have set about trying to achieve it by killing innocents, Muslims and non-Muslims alike is repulsive.

Muslims are standing up to be counted because they don’t want this image. Is it going to be a problem for Bin Laden you bet. Is he going to disappear over night, no. Is he going to find it hard to be heard yes.

Just before the last US election late in October 04 Bin Laden threatened the people of the United States to stay out of the affairs of Muslim nations.. "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Each state that will not play with our security, by default will secure themselves." Now the shoe is on the other foot. It is Muslims who most threaten Bin Laden’s long term security.

The al Qaeda leader has yet to be heard from on the November elections, there is still time yet, but with some of his favorite websites down he will find it much harder. Maybe he’s already tried, there is every possibility he has some now routine invective already prepared waiting to go.

In 2004 his threats had more resonance, in March that year al Qaeda had made good on his threat to target Spain or at very least a European ally of the US in Iraq, killing 191 people in coordinated bombings on early morning commuter trains in Madrid. What ever threat that was implied for US citizens in Bin Laden’s 2004 Election message it has yet to reach maturity. A similar message this year would sound hollow but as Bin Laden has so far not changed tactics and responded to growing Muslim anger it’s unlikely he has much else to offer.

But as I said he won’t be going away over night, the threat from his followers is still real but the tide is turning. As we can see in the 04 message Bin Laden favors neither Democrats nor Republican’s. The threat he will most fear is of a US President willing and able to act with both patience and precision in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As I hear time and again from both Afghans and Pakistanis the conflict there is regional and requires a regional solution. It will take patience to achieve but such a result will win local support and may ultimately help flush Bin Laden out.

Men who once fought alongside Bin Laden are today at the root of efforts to drive a wedge between the Taliban and al Qaeda. Their goal is to bring down al Qaeda by isolating them, the cost may be political reconciliation for some Taliban and even their leader Mullah Omar. A US President who can help pull that off, these men tell me, will make their job easier and Bin Laden that much more vulnerable to isolation from more and more Muslims and ultimately that means easier to catch.

Some people may find these ideas hard to stomach but when I talk to the people at the forefront of taking the Muslim jihad or inner struggle back to Bin Laden that’s what I’m hearing. The same people who are taking down al Qaeda websites are brothers in arms of the Pakistani pop stars and Bin Laden’s former allies.

Al Qaeda’s radical attacks and the carnage they cause is having a damaging effect not just on the image of Islam but increasingly on Muslims. It is a cost that is now being counted. Most of those killed in suicide attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan these days are Muslims. It’s an inescapable fact and the logic of it is finally catching up with the men ultimately responsible. Bin Laden is being called to account by the very people he seeks to win over.

'Al-Ekhlass' A website where many of al Qaeda's jihadist messages are posted is offline, having been replaced with the domain joker.com.

UPDATE FROM OCTAVIA: Thanks for the comments about the hacking vs. domain registration expiration. This is definitely a valid point. Our focus here is not to write a technical essay about hacking. It’s merely an attempt at showing how some people – we don’t know who – are fighting al Qaeda by attacking their websites. Al-Ekhlaas website has been down for months following years of operation. While today it redirects you to joker.com, tomorrow it might redirect you to another site. While we do not know who is hacking into the jihadi websites, there is no doubt they’re being hacked.

How do we know that?

On the jihadi sites that work, it is common practice to announce that “Site X has been downed by evil forces but we’re working on bringing it back up.” Or “Site Y was hacked but you can join us temporarily on this address.” To the dismay of the jihadist community and its supporters, the Al-Ekhlaas website has been downed/hacked/disabled – you choose the terminology that works for you. From the chatter about it, this doesn’t seem like this is a domain registration problem. Al-Ekhlaas has been on line uninterrupted for a long time. This is the first time it disappears abruptly and can’t get back on.
__________

Octavia Nasr | BIO
CNN senior editor for Arab affairs

A hacking war is raging on Jihadi websites. Radical Islamist sites have been attacking and getting attacked for quite some time. The website hacking practice was common in 2001 and 2002... Following the 9/11 attacks when al Qaeda used only one website to communicate its messages to supporters and foes alike. That website was called alneda.com. It was getting constantly hacked... sometimes several hackings a day. After every hacking the site managed to resurface on the net until it disappeared from the scene in 2004 to be replaced by other websites - What started as one al Qaeda-linked site mushroomed into dozens which branched out into hundreds of supporting sites that serve as dissemination centers over the internet.

Two well-known al Qaeda-linked sites are Al-Hesbah and Al-Ekhlaas. Al-Hesbah is the oldest and requires a username and password to access it. Its membership was open to the public in 2004 but became restricted over the years. This site became known as the first venue for uploaded al Qaeda messages - from Osama bin Laden video messages to statements and claims of responsibilities for attacks carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq or even Europe. Al-Ekhlaas followed with a sleeker image, and more technical bells and whistles.

The hacking war works both ways.
There are documented cases of extremist groups hacking into local websites that disagree with their messages. One case that drew the attention of western media took place about a month ago when a Sunni group hacked into the site of Shiite Iraqi Cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The group posted a Bill Maher clip making fun of an edict the cleric had made concerning a sexual subject. The group's claim was that the cleric and his edicts are bringing shame to Islam and giving a good reason for the west to laugh at the Islamic religion.

Shortly before September of 2008, al Qaeda watchers started speculating about the next al Qaeda message which they expected to be released around the 9/11 anniversary - a practice al Qaeda and its video arm, As-Sahab, have been consistent about. The message never came partly because those websites were hacked into and completely disabled at times.

Today Al-Ekhlaas is off line, having been replaced with the domain joker.com. Trying to go to their site, you get a message saying that "this domain was registered with Joker.com."

Al-Hesbah and a few other al Qaeda-linked sites remain in operation, not because they escaped hacking, but because they manage to resurrect themselves under different names and continue to post messages mainly from al Qaeda enthusiasts. So the drop in al Qaeda-released videos is evident, the lack of messages from al Qaeda leadership is obvious. What is not obvious is whether al Qaeda has decided to slow down production and release of videos or the hacking is so severe and pointed that it paralyzed the media activity of the terror group.

Jonathan Alter
Newsweek senior editor and columnist

The decision by Barack Obama to return to Hawaii to visit his ailing grandmother might not be the last surprise of the last fortnight of this campaign. Two weeks is an eternity in presidential politics, which means we're likely to have one more twist before this ends—though with early voting, more than a quarter of the electorate now votes before Election Day.

What will the twist be? Reviving Jeremiah Wright, which the McCain campaign is hinting at, won't mean much. Unless the Reverend Wright himself resurfaces (he's abroad and on radio silence), that thrust would be easily parried by the Obama campaign. That's because John McCain is on tape saying a man's pastor should not be relevant in judging his character. Even if an independent 527 committee were to make an attack ad involving Wright, Obama's got an obvious jujitsu response ad making McCain out to be a hypocrite.

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A frame grab from new video featuring an audio statement from Osama bin Laden to the people of the West about Israel's 60th anniversary.

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

Less than a day after Republican presidential candidate John McCain promised that if he won the presidency Osama bin Laden would be captured or killed by 2013, a message from al Qaeda’s leader appeared on jihadist websites reminding the world that he is alive and well.

Bin Laden’s audiotape message commented on the recent 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel; promised that he would fight for the liberation of Palestine, and told his Muslim listeners that they have a duty to help in that effort.

Was the audiotape an attempt by bin Laden to remain relevant by pushing on the issue that remains a hot button for most Muslims? After 9/11 some commentators said that the Palestinian issue was something that bin Laden had recently adopted in order to appeal to a wide range of Muslims. This is false.

When al Qaeda’s leader declared war on the United States publicly for the first time in August 1996
part of his rationale concerned the Palestinian issue:

“My Muslim Brothers: The money you pay to buy American goods will be transformed into bullets and used against our brothers in Palestine…I feel still the pain of [the loss of] Al-Quds in my internal organs; (Al Quds, the site of the third holiest place of pilgrimage in Islam, was annexed to Israel in 1967.)

Despite the fact the bin Laden has long been preoccupied by the Palestinian issue, al Qaeda has done little concrete to advance the cause of Palestine. Part of the reason for that is al Qaeda’s leaders have for years been critical of Palestinian figures such as Yasser Arafat, who they despised for being a “secularist” and the leadership of Hamas which they have criticized for taking part in elections. For its part, Hamas has also publicly distanced itself from al Qaeda.

Despite the animosity between al Qaeda and Hamas, what may emerge in the Palestinian Authority are small, ultraviolent groups inspired by bin Laden’s messages that are more militant than Hamas. A similar phenomenon occurred in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon recently with the emergence of violent al Qaeda-like groups such as Fatah al-Islam. Needless to say, al Qaeda-like groups emerging in Gaza would further complicate matters for the Palestinians and Israelis.