Al-Qaida has set its sights on Jewish and Israeli targets
around the world, planning to strike by "land, sea, and air,"
according to a statement attributed to the group's spokesman
that was broadcast last Sunday.
An audio tape played on Al-Jazeera TV and attributed to al-
Qaida spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith, charges that "the Jewish-
Crusader coalition will not be safe anywhere from the
fighters' attacks. We will hit the most vital centers and we
will strike against its strategic operations with all
possible means.
"We will chase the enemy using the weapon of terror by
widening fighting fronts and conducting more concentrated and
faster operations . . . so [the enemy] feels unsafe and
unstable on land, air, and sea," said the message, which came
as security sources confirmed "a specific warning" of a
threat to Israeli and Jewish targets in Prague.
In Washington, a White House official said the statement
amounted to no more than a "same song, different day"
threat.
The message also contains an "official" statement of
responsibility for the suicide attack in Mombasa on November
28, which killed 10 Kenyans and three Israelis and a failed
attack on an Israeli civilian airliner.
The message, whose text also appeared on several al-Qaida Web
sites, also issued a threat of a massive strike against the
US. One al-Qaida-affiliated Web site also posted a picture
purported to be that of Abu Gheith.
Col. (res.) Yoni Fighel, of the International Policy
Institute for Counterterrorism, has studied what he calls the
mushrooming of al-Qaida affiliated Web sites, calling them
"one of the greatest nightmares of globalization."
Through these Web sites, which are multiplying with each
successful al-Qaida attack, cell members from disparate parts
of the world can transmit messages, encouragement, and
information, free of charge and with little risk of being
caught.
Fighel believes al-Qaida's momentum is snowballing,
especially given the ever-quickening pace of the loosely-
affiliated group's claims of responsibility for attacks and
its threats.
The Israel Foreign Ministry has issued a travel advisory
warning for Israelis traveling in Ethiopia, Eritrea, South
Africa, Kenya, and certain areas of Thailand.
The Israeli security establishment believes that activists
from Al-Qaida in Lebanon are running Palestinian terrorists
based in Gaza. Also, the first Palestinian to be charged by
Israel with undergoing training in an Al-Qaida base in
Afghanistan has confessed to most of the charges against
him.
Military Intelligence believes that despite the American
operations in Afghanistan, Al-Qaida operatives are still
active there and are involved in trying to establish
terrorist cells in the territories. Their main route is
through Lebanon.
Investigations into the recent attacks on the Paradise Hotel
and the Arkia plane in Mombasa are pointing to the
possibility of joint operation by Hizbullah and al-Qaida.
Such an alliance between rival wings of the Islamic movement
had previously been thought unlikely, but the Sunday
Telegraph of London reports that investigators in Mombasa
have uncovered "a number of clues" that suggest al-Qaida is
working with Hizbullah to attack American and Israeli targets
around the world.
According to the report, the al-Qaida terrorists responsible
for the suicide bombing at the hotel used the same techniques
as those developed by Hizbullah in the 1980s.
Investigators also discovered that the two missiles fired at
the Arkia airliner are of the same type used by Hizbullah to
attack Israeli targets. They also noted that the only claim
for responsibility for the Mombasa attacks was made on a
Hizbullah radio station.
A military source in Israel downplayed those reports due to
the organizations' divergent religious affiliations: al-Qaida
is Sunni and Hizbullah is Shi'ite but could not rule it
out.
Particular interest is now focused on the personal links
between Osama bin Laden and Imad Mugniyeh, the Hizbullah
terrorist who masterminded some of its most spectacular
atrocities and kidnappings in Lebanon. He appears on the
FBI's 10 most-wanted list for orchestrating attacks against
US targets in Lebanon.
The Sunday Telegraph also noted that between 80 and
100 al-Qaida fighters who fled into Iran were provided with
false passports by Hizbullah before being relocated in Saudi
Arabia and Yemen. At least 10 senior al-Qaida commanders are
also believed to have been sent to Lebanon, where they work
closely with Hizbullah commanders in the Bekaa Valley.
The American magazine Vanity Fair recently wrote that
al-Qaida has established a base on the Argentine border close
to the point where Hizbullah terrorists planned the 1993
attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires.
While al-Qaida has been linked to the bombing of a
discotheque in Bali in October, the Sunday Telegraph
reports that Hizbullah is also known to have set up cells
in the Far East, notably in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia,
the Philippines, and Singapore.
