Thomas Bailey

The New Terror: Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda

The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor (1941), the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah

Federal Building (1995), and the September 11th Attacks (2001) altered American mentalities.

They were the only times in modern American history that operations of mass death were

perpetrated on the American home front – war and terror as a personal experience was brought

into the lives of everyday Americans. Attacks similar to those, and sometimes worse, occurred

regularly throughout the world. The seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca (1979), the

hijackings of EgyptAir 648 (1985) and Pan Am 103 (1988), the Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo

subway (1995), the Madrid train bombings (2004), bombings in London (2005), Hyderabad

(2007), Jaipur (2008), Issers (2008) are only a small sampling of events. Each strike planned and

executed to instill fear and alter the mindset of the populace.

Apart from Pearl Harbor, these and similar events are labeled acts of terrorism. Pearl

Harbor is considered, however, the act of a dictatorial regime along the same lines as the

atrocities of Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein. Academic definitions often do not label as terrorist acts

those perpetrated by nations.1 Defining terrorism in the modern era will be important to

understand its raison d’être in order to improve the situation – both for the actors and receptors

of terrorist acts. The rise of modern terrorism in the Middle East is a complex issue with

multiple facets. The failure of Pan-Arabic nationalism, the rise of Islamism, the continued

imperialism of the Great Powers, and the rise of Islamic fanaticism all played a critical role in its

1
See Charles L. Ruby, “The Definition of Terrorism,” in Dimensions of Terrorism, ed. Alan O’Day (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 16; Thomas J. Badey, “Defining International Terrorism: A Pragmatic Approach,”
in Dimensions of Terrorism, ed. Alan O’Day (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 23; Jack P. Gibbs,
“Conceptualization of Terrorism,” in Dimensions of Terrorism, ed. Alan O’Day (Burlington, VT: Ashgate
Publishing, 2004), 54; Paul J. Smith, The Terrorism Ahead: Confronting Transnational Violence in the Twenty-First
Century (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2008), 10.
 Bailey 2

development. The three most commonly known terrorist groups from the Middle East are

Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda; and it is through these three organizations that I will

demonstrate my thesis.

A persistent problem in the study of terrorism is the lack of an universally excepted

definition, thereby hindering international cooperation.2 Thomas Badey in his argumentation for

a utilitarian definition remarked that academic definitions are too complex and contradictory to

be used for practical purposes. At the same time he argues against political definitions for their

vagueness, which are made to fit a multitude of actions – again rendering it useless for analytical

purposes.3 Instead Badey maintained that a utilitarian definition provides academic rigor and

political exigency, accounts for common usage, and follows an historical perspective.4 Despite

the lackluster of Badey’s own definition, it provided a framework to judge a definition for its

appropriateness. H.H.A. Cooper postulated, “terrorism is the international generation of massive

fear by human beings for the purpose of securing or maintaining control over other human

beings.”5 Within Cooper’s definition are three primary issues: massive fear; conducted by

humans on an international level; and act(s) to control other people.

An area of common agreement amongst scholars of terrorism is that its method is the

implementation of fear. Death and extreme suffering, along with a multitude of other actions are

capable of instilling that fear. The terrorist though need not directly attack to introduce fear, but

merely the threat can have the same impact.6 Terrorist acts affect the collective psyche, creating

an irrational fear. For example, a person has a greater chance of dying in an automobile accident

2
Smith, 11.
3
Badey, 22
4
Badey, 23.
5
H.H.A. Cooper, “Terrorism: The Problem of Definition Revisited,” in Dimensions of Terrorism, ed. Alan O’Day
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 3.
6
Cooper, 6.
 Bailey 3

than in a terrorist attack, and yet Americans fear terrorists more than their cars. Charles Ruby

correlated it to the fear of a soldier in battle, in which death is ever present and out of the

soldier’s control.7 In order to maintain this heightened anxiety and fear, terrorists are forced to

seek more grandiose displays of violence. The acts cannot be repetitious, but need to grow in

intensity because society itself continues to grow number with each successive act and the

prevalence of so-called disaster porn.8

Another near-universal dimension agreed upon by academicians is that terrorism is an act

of non-state agents. International law ensures the application of the label to non-state entities by

providing great leeway for governments to police their populace and even to coerce them.9 The

belief that states are not terrorists is a repeated mantra lacking argumentation, yet emphatically

proclaimed. Cooper affirmed the concept of non-state actors only. In arguing against the

terrorist-freedom fighter dichotomy, however, he claimed that the nature and quality of the act

alone should define it as terrorism.10 A similar argument was also put forward by Ruby in

advocating a behavioral model for terrorism.11 If the act is constitutive of terrorism, then the

actor is irrelevant – the only exception being if the actor was nature, which would nullify the first

and third parameters of the definition that requires the instilling of fear for the sake of an agenda.

Terrorists have an agenda that seeks to alter the status quo in some way. In the final

analysis, these agendas are political. They can be wrapped in the mantle of religious ideology,

but they want a societal change – a political change. In addition, the perpetrators often see the

terrorist act as an act of war, which helps to provide legitimacy from their own perspective.12

7
Ruby, 15-16.
8
Cooper, 6; Smith, 4-5.
9
Cooper, 5.
10
Cooper, 4, 7.
11
Ruby, 20.
12
Ruby, 16.
 Bailey 4

Often terrorists believe that demonstrating the ability to attack without impunity or to die for a

cause will spark a revolution. Terrorism then becomes political discourse at the end of weapon.13

The method is fear, the result is political activity, and sometimes it works.

The 1980s witnessed the hegemonic rise of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al-Qaeda. Each

organization was founded as the result of an occupation. Hezbollah is concentrated in southern

Lebanon, which experienced a large influx of Palestinian refugees beginning in 1948. As

Palestinians attacked Israel, Israeli reprisals were inflicted on the refugee camps and the

surrounding regions. Tensions mounted. When Israel invaded southern Lebanon in 1982,

widespread discontent against Israel and the government in Damascus coalesced into the

resistance force of Hezbollah.14 Hamas formed directly out of the failure of the Palestinian

Liberation Organization (PLO) to secure a Palestinian homeland and to defeat Israel. Hamas is a

descendant of the Muslim Brotherhood, and as such, views the PLO’s failure as a result of their

secular approach.15 Al-Qaeda was a response to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, but its

existence was dependent on other factors too. Al-Qaeda saw the Soviets only as a symptom of a

larger problem – the failure of Arab states. In its opinion, Middle Eastern governments had

failed to represent or defend the interests of its people, exemplified by the abandonment of

Islamic rule. These states were seen as too week to improve – dependent on the support of non-

Muslims – and yet too strong to be overtly conquered. A two-pronged attack against the non-

13
Smith, 12.
14
Eitan Azani, Hezbollah: The Story of the Party of God from Revolution to Institutionalization, (New York:
Palgrave Macmillian, 2009), 48-59.
15
Matthew Levitt, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2006), 8.
 Bailey 5

Muslim puppet masters and the radicalization of the local Muslim populace was seen as the only

means to re-establish the Dar al-Islam.16

Immediate causes provide only a snapshot and not a fuller historical perspective on the

rise of modern terrorism, which the long-term view can provide. Despite the categorization

provided, each cause is not within a vacuum and often overlaps, is interrelated, or is causal. A

brief example is the distinction between Islamism and Islamic fanaticism. An individual who

supports Islamism advocates rule by Islamic law and custom (Qu’ran, Shari’ah, and Sunnah),

which can be done through political discourse. Islamic fanaticism on the other hand favors

violence, coercion, and death to achieve Islamic rule.

The weakening of Britain and France from the Second World War (1939-1945) provided

the opportunity for the mandate states to exercise independent authority. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,

and Egypt were left with an identity problem. A solution began to emerge: Pan-Arabism. Pan-

Arabism is a form of modern nationalism, which sees all Arabs as a common people with a

common culture and language, and thus should be united as a single nation. Pan-Arabism was

strongest in Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser and to a lesser degree with the Ba’athist regimes

in Syria and Iraq.17

Initially the Pan-Arabic movement gained support amongst the Arab population of the

Middle East. Under Nasser in Egypt, the movement was seen to stand against the former great

power by nationalizing the Suez Canal in 1956 and Britain was unable to resist. When Britain

allied with France and Israel to militarily retake the canal, they were stopped by the

condemnation of both the Soviet Union and the United States. Nasser though seized the

16
Mohammad-Mahmoud Mohamedou, Understanding Al Qaeda: The Transformation of War, (Ann Arbor, MI:
Pluto, 2007), 45-53.
17
William L. Cleveland and Martin Burton, A History of the Modern Middle East, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 2009), 323-344.
 Bailey 6

opportunity to proclaim it as a victory for Arabs over the new enemy, Israel – halting its

continued expansion. The claimed credit increased Nasser’s status, as well as belief in the Pan-

Arabic doctrine.18

Besides unification of all Arabic people, the other central plank to Pan-Arabism was

secularization. Though Arabs were predominantly Muslim, there also existed a substantial

minority of non-Muslim Arabs. In order to unite them all, secularization and modernization

were important tools. Secularization required the privatization of Islam and the decrease of the

wider Islamic influence in society.19 Regional and local goodwill, gained through military action

and propaganda, provided the necessary support to achieve the aims of Pan-Arabism. Its appeal

lasted only as long as the façade remained however.

The association of Pan-Arabism with Nasser was so complete that if he failed, so did the

system. Cracks began to appear with the creation of the United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958.

A united Arabic state was the stated goal of Pan-Arabism and so the union of Egypt and Syria

(both Pan-Arabic states) was logical. It also extended an invitation to Iraq, a Ba’athist state, to

join as well. Iraq’s refusal to join signaled a rift in Pan-Arabism – the leaders of each state

desired it as long as they controlled the subsequent state. It instilled doubt on whether Pan-

Arabism was the goal or the cloak for traditional nationalism. Egyptian dominance eventually

led Syria to stage a coup and ended the UAR after only three years.20

The failure of the UAR did not end the appeal of Pan-Arabism because Nasser remained

popular because of his stand against Israel. The economic reforms initiated were not working

and dissent within Egypt intensified, which resulted in governmental crackdowns, especially

18
Cleveland, 308-313
19
Cleveland, 307, 310, 315-321
20
Cleveland, 313-315.
 Bailey 7

against the Muslim Brotherhood who were seen as the primary instigators.21 The final collapse

coincided with the Egyptian defeat in the June War of 1967. The Egyptian Army proved

inadequate to defeat the Israeli Defense Force, despite decades of modernization.22 Pan-Arabism

was defeated too. It had looked to Western technology and methods and in the minds of Arabs

was found wanting. It was thought that only an Eastern solution could solve an Eastern problem.

The Muslim Brotherhood with its call to a revitalized Islam and Shar’iah-rule was seen as the

only successor – the creation of an Islamic state or states.

As mentioned earlier, Hamas is a direct descendant of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Its principal rival for power within the PLO was the Fatah political party. Fatah is not a Pan-

Arabic movement, but a nationalist movement that seeks to unite all Palestinians regardless of

religion. It too therefore is a secularizing agency and seen in the eyes of Hamas as the same as

Nasser’s agenda, which will, according to Hamas, inevitably fail and leave Palestine in a worse

situation. Hezbollah, as its own name implies, desires a theocracy. Since its establishment, it

has aligned itself with the revolutionary elements of Iran and desires to establish the same in

Lebanon.23 Sayyid Qutb, an intellectual for the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed in 1966,

enumerated the underpinnings of Al-Qaeda. The West was seen as the source of decadence and

laxity that was becoming prevalent amongst Muslims in the East. The Muslim leaders had

become apostates for abandoning strict Islam and so Qutb saw it as the duty of Muslims to

overthrow the regimes.24

The influence of Western powers is seen within the Pan-Arabic movement, but also in the

direct actions of Western governments. Islamist and Islamic fanatics perceived a continuing
21
Cleveland 306-307.
22
Cleveland, 339-343.
23
Augustus R Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 35-41.
24
Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 28-
37.
 Bailey 8

encroachment of Western imperialism in the Middle East. The perception is based on myth and

reality. The myth is that the stated goal of Western powers is the destruction of Islam. The

reality is that during the Cold War, the Middle East was a battlefield between Capitalism and

Communism. The area was of strategic importance in terms of the Truman Doctrine and also as

a transportation crossroads for goods and supplies. In addition, it provided an essential resource

for Western society – oil. Three incidents dominate: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan,

and the Second Gulf War.

Since the creation of Israel in 1948, it has been a major source of conflict in the Middle

East having engaged in seven wars with its neighbors during its sixty-two year history.

Throughout these conflicts, one of the staunchest supporters of Israel has been the United States.

Placing it in the perspective of the Arab mind, Israel is a foreign occupier resulting from the

waves of aliyahs between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Often displacing

Palestinians, the immigration created resentment that resulted in outbreaks of violence

throughout the mandate period.25 Close association with the United States after statehood made

Israel appear to be an instrument of United States policy in the Middle East.26

Afghanistan became a central front in the Cold War. Following the American retreat in

Viet Nam, the West needed to prove it was capable of stopping continued aggression and yet at

the same time not seen as being involved if the operation failed. The Soviet Union provided the

opportunity when it sent troops to Afghanistan in December 1979. The United States, Great

Britain, and Saudi Arabia provided aid and supplies. The result was Soviet withdrawal, but not

an end to the fighting. Thousands of foreign fighters, not affiliated with the principal powers,

flocked into Afghanistan to engage in the struggle against the godless communists. The flames

25
Cleveland, 244-261.
26
Smith, 174-175.
 Bailey 9

of jihad were stirred and peace remained elusive. The foreign governments had their own unique

agendas and when those objectives were met simply left the problems behind.27

The invasion and annexation of Kuwait by Iraq on August 2, 1990, created a storm in the

Middle East. In terms of Western strategic importance, Western governments believed Iraqi

President Saddam Hussein’s actions could destabilize the region.28 The threatening posture of

Iraq towards Saudi Arabia paved the way for an invitation by the Saudis to invite American

troops into the country.29 Though initially believed to be a temporary situation, twenty years

later American troops are still present in Saudi Arabia. To Muslims, the Arabian Peninsula is

sacred territory being the land of the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina. The presence

of non-Muslims was seen by some as an affront to Islam and as another indication of the corrupt

nature of the Saudi government.

A discussion of modern terrorism naturally involves Israel. The threat is constant and a

major issue in Israeli politics. In terms of imperialism, the Arab perception needs to be taken

into account. Prior to 1994, Egypt alone recognized the State of Israel because of the domestic

problem recognition created – Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated shortly after

recognizing Israel.30 The existence of Israel is an affront for Islamic fanatics. Hamas,

Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda deny the right for Israel to exist. In part it is propaganda to ensure the

continued support of certain segments of the population, but there is also a theological

justification. Israel occupies a section of the Dar al-Islam that was seen to be taken forcibly and

27
Mahmood, Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of
Terror, (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004), 124-133.
28
Cleveland, 482-485.
29
Cleveland, 480.
30
Cleveland, 380-382.
 Bailey 10

therefore does not have the right to exist and must be retaken by righteous Muslims in their

eyes.31

Hezbollah and Hamas seek a change in the international political realm. In the case of

Hezbollah, it is the establishment of an Islamic republic, similar to Iran, in Lebanon. Hamas

seeks to create the first Sunni Islamic Republic in the entirety of the old Palestinian Mandate.

Terror was the method both employed domestically and internationally to pressure foreign

governments to intervene on their behalf. The attacks more recently though have been directed

principally against Israel and less on the international scale.

Al-Qaeda is different as it eschews regional nationalism. It clearly sees the United States

and other Western countries as the reason for the difficulties within the Middle East. The West

is seen as importing corruption, immorality, and a move away from Islam. Emboldened by its

successful attacks, it sees itself as the modern warriors of Allah reclaiming the Dar al-Islam.32

So what does it all mean; is this discussion only an academic exercise or does it provide

an opportunity to improve the situation? An element lacking in the political discourse for the

International War on Terror is the West’s own culpability. A lesson often taught to children is

that it takes two to fight and that neither side is wholly innocent. Real grievances and concerns

exist that are not being addressed by Western powers – the roots of terrorism. The solution is not

for the West to fix all the problems, but to acknowledge its impact and seek ways to improve.

At the same time, negotiation by threat and violence has not provided long-term solutions

to problems. Fear subverts reason and must be perpetually maintained for continued adherence.

If that is the case, then terrorism never ends and the formerly aggrieved now become the

31
Raymond Ibrahim (ed., trans.), The Al Qaeda Reader, (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 137-140.
32
Al-Qaeda, “World Islamic Front Statement Urging Crusade Against Jews and Crusaders,” quoted in Gilles Kepel
and Jean-Pierre Milelli (eds.), Al Qaeda in Its Own Words, t ranslated by Pascale Ghazaleh (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press, 2008), 53-56.
 Bailey 11

oppressors, perpetuating the cycle. Good faith, if it is possible, must exist on both sides in order

to cease hostilities so that a true solution can be found.

International terrorism exists, and if the last three decades have shown anything it is that

current methods are unsuccessful. Political courage is necessary to redefine the parameters away

from us versus them, destroy the enemy, and endless blame on the other. A path needs to be

found that allows for a dialogue to commence and not mere sound bites for public consumption.

Grievances exist and without a means to redress, humans resort to violence.

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