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By Taieb Mahjoub, Agence France-Presse
DUBAI: Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip is boosting the
popularity of Hamas and other Islamic groups in the Arab world where
people are dismayed by the passiveness of their regimes, analysts
said on Sunday.
“Hamas appears to be scoring points. So far,
Israel has not achieved all its military and political objectives
and has lost the media battle,” said Dhia Rashwan, an Egyptian
specialist in Islamist movements.
Israel’s military offensive on the
Hamas-controlled territory has killed at least 875 Palestinians,
including 275 children, and left 3,620 wounded, since it began on
December 27.
Media coverage shows an imbalance between a
modern force, armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated
weapons, and a militia equipped only for guerrilla warfare, analysts
said.
This appears to have contributed to inciting
angry protests worldwide, mainly in Arab countries, they believe.
“This is a repetition of the major crises seen
in the region during the past few years,” which strengthened
Islamism in the Arab world, Rashwan told Agence France-Presse.
He highlighted Israel’s war on Lebanon in July
2006 which failed to destroy the military might of the Iran-backed
Shiite Hezbollah, and the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, which
brought Islamism to the forefront of the resistance.
“Opposition in the Arab world has become led
by Islamist movements . . . Public opinion is led by these
movements,” at the expense of Arab nationalists and liberal
oppositions who are losing ground.”
Meanwhile, “the gap between Arab regimes and
their people is being widened all the time,” Rashwan added.
Abdul Aziz al-Sager, head of the Dubai-based
Gulf Research Center (GRC), agreed that Islamists are reaping a
windfall of popularity from the Gaza war.
“Injustice serves the Islamist movements,
putting them in the vanguard through their support for jihad” or
holy war, in the Arab world, he told Agence France-Presse.
“What Israel is doing in Gaza is strengthening
Hamas” in terms of gaining the backing of the public opinion for
the movement, although “part of this opinion still notices a lack
of political maturity of this movement,” Sager said.
“In wanting to wipe out the resistance, you
have created a resistance inside every household,” Hamas’s
exiled political chief, Khaled Meshaal, told Israeli leaders in a
speech on Saturday.
“As Israel strikes Hamas to weaken it, this
movement is becoming stronger among the Palestinians and Arabs,
mainly as it has proven to be the only one to stand up to Israel,
following the example of Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Bahraini activist
Ali Fakhrou told Agence France-Presse.
“Through this war,
Israel does not seek [just] to hit Hamas, but the Islamist
resistance which is feared by the United States and its allies among
the Arab regimes, who believe that success for this resistance would
lead to fundamental changes,” in the region, he said.
“Islamist movements, born out of the void
created by the collapse of the Arab nationalist and leftist
ideologies, are the only ones capable of protecting the region from
the madness of US politics and Israel,” said the former Arab
nationalist.
“Islamist movements are going to dominate the
political scene for many years to come,” Fakhrou predicted, citing
the “interaction between these movements and the Arab street where
recent pro-Gaza demonstrations were dominated by Islamist slogans
and calls for jihad.”
Jordan’s Princess Haya, a UN messenger of
peace, also warned that growing Arab anger and frustration over
Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, could spiral out of control.
“I think the frustration on the Arab street,
the humiliation, the hurt, the anger and the sadness are something
that can’t be kept under control very easily in the near coming
future if this [war] continues,” said Haya, daughter of late King
Hussein and wife to Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid
al-Maktoum.
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