With President-elect Trump’s administration soon to enter the White House and already planning its foreign policy, including in the Middle East, it is vital to review developments in the Palestinian issue since Trump ended his first presidency. Most significantly, Palestinian secular nationalism has declined while the Palestinians’ fundamentalist religious narrative is on the rise. Today, that narrative is imbued with Hamas Islamist ideology, which Iran is likely to deploy as a new means to destabilize Europe and, eventually, the United States.
The situation came into focus with the Islamist violence against the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans in Amsterdam. The pogromists did not call for the liberation of Palestine or a Palestinian state; their cri de coeur was: “Jews are a cancer!”
The outbreak in the Netherlands was only the latest in a spate of violence in all the European cities with large Muslim populations. France, where Muslims represent some 10 percent of the population, is on tenterhooks. Especially notable have been preparations in Hamburg to support a Muslim caliphate that would impose sharia law. In Hamburg, the goals of radical Islam are intertwined with Iranian intentions. Germany closed the Muslim center in Hamburg and expelled the preacher because of the funding he received from Iran and Hizbullah. Hamas’s fingerprints are detectable as well.
When Hamas attacked the Gaza border communities, it did not speak of a war of liberation and a Palestinian state, but, rather, of a religious war to liberate Jerusalem. Hamas called on all the fronts surrounding Israel to join the war under the cloak of religion.
Because of the Palestinian Authority’s resounding failure to seize the countless opportunities it had to establish a Palestinian state, no one takes it seriously as an actor that could play the lead role in the reconstruction of Gaza, if it occurs.
Moreover, the name Hamas chose for the war—the Al-Aqsa Flood—was not arbitrary. This motif was taken from the Islamic State, which used it already in the second edition of its ideological mouthpiece Dabiq, immediately after the group’s establishment in Mosul.
The motif of the flood is taken from the story about Noah’s Ark. Islamists believe that Allah will bring a worldwide flood and only those within the ark of the Islamic State will survive to establish a new world.
The choice of this theme was meant to convey that Sinwar’s Hamas was the successor of the Islamic State, Sinwar was the new Bin Laden, and the liberation of Al-Aqsa would unite all the Muslims under the flag of Islam.
The ominous events in Amsterdam indicate the degree to which Europe’s Muslims have operationalized Hamas’s messages.
What exactly happened is still unclear. Were the events planned or were they an initiative of the taxi drivers, many of whom were of northern Moroccan and Algerian background?
Either way, radical Islam in Europe is taking a new form. Until now, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership in Europe preferred a quiet infiltration of the European social and political milieu, rejecting the Islamic State’s approach of undermining that setting with terror attacks. The clearest manifestation was the establishment of the Red-Green Alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the European left. The Brotherhood feared that the Islamic State’s terror would put an end to the quiet infiltration of European society.
The Muslim antisemitic riot in the streets of Anne Frank’s city was exactly what the Muslim Brotherhood did not want to happen.
Did Iran’s long arm play a role? Was the Hamburg strategy being implemented here as well? It is hard to know, but many of the drivers were of Algerian background; did they instigate their fellow drivers of Moroccan background?
Algeria is Iran’s main ally in the Maghreb (northern Africa). There is an active Hamas office in Algeria’s capital, and Algeria is a candidate to host the Hamas leadership if it is expelled from Qatar. Algeria rejected appeals to host Sinwar at the end of the Gaza war, and it is unclear whether it will now agree to host his confederates.
The Arab world got its lessons when Hamas’s Khaled Mashal betrayed Syria and sided with the Syrian opposition. Hamas was expelled from Syria. No one wants to take an unnecessary risk—especially not Algeria, which has already paid a heavy price in its bloody civil war against its own radical Islam.
A change in the Islamic strategy in Europe, from political efforts to violence, requires Europe to beware of Iran as an agent that will incite Muslim youth and to be wary of the ISIS-related Hamas tied to Iran. These groups endanger Europe’s internal stability. The terrorist virus could then spread to the United States as well.
