ISRAEL FEARS INFLUENCE OF IRAN, AL QAEDA ON HAMAS

by Fawzia Sheikh

(IPS) JERUSALEM -- Anxieties are growing in Israel that Iran is trying to control the new Palestinian government and that al Qaeda may have infiltrated Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel's Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has warned since the January elections in the Palestinian Authority of a new terrorist bloc composed of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.

As a key member of this alliance, Iran hopes one day to use the militant group Hamas that is now ruling the Palestinian Authority as a way to channel weapons, U.S. State Department counter-terrorism coordinator Henry A. Crumpton said on a recent tour of Israel and Egypt.

Political analysts say that this desire spells disaster for Israel and the West considering the crisis surrounding Iran's wish to generate nuclear power, which critics describe as a cover for building atomic weapons.

Iran's lustful glances at Hamas, said one academic, go back a long way.

"They are trying to export the Islamic revolution which they started in 1979," Professor Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan told IPS. He said the Iranian government succeeded in Lebanon, and Iran will use political support, money or weapons to gain a foothold in the next arena -- the Palestinian territories.

Iran has already pledged to compensate for the financial assistance the international community denies the Palestinian Authority following the rise to power of the radical Hamas.

The Iranian majority are Shia Muslim, while Hamas is made up of Sunnis. The religious distinction is based on disagreement over the successor to the prophet Muhammad, and has sparked sectarian violence in the Muslim world, most recently in Iraq.

"Arabs look down on Persians," Kedar said. As a result, he said, "Iranians are so eager to help Hamas that they will do anything they can do to prove they are legitimate Muslims, people, and a nation. This is a total change of physics."

Professor Eyal Zisser, head of the department of Middle East studies at Tel Aviv University, says Iran and Hamas have mutual interests such as keeping Israel at bay.

"Iran wants to be the protector of the Islamic world. They want to create a balance of terror. A balance of power. The same balance during the Cold War: "'Don't play with us because we can retaliate through Hezbollah.'"

This new alliance is intended in part to deter Israel and the United States, he said, from attacking Iran's nuclear weapons and reactors.

This is where "nucleotheism," a sense of divinely authorized nuclear proliferation, comes into play. Kedar said Iran believes God directs the clergy, particularly Shia clergy in everyday life, even in carrying out a nuclear program.

But many doubt that Iran will ever hand full-fledged nuclear weapons to Hamas, even if the Islamic state manages to produce them.

"They're not such idiots," Zisser told IPS. "They will be blamed. They will be attacked."

Besides, he said, operating a nuclear program requires infrastructure, installations and technicians. "The Palestinians don't have it."

What Iran could provide, though, are dirty bombs combining a traditional explosive with radioactive material. "If you bring that into a mall, people will get cancer," said Kedar. "This is a very bad scenario because it's very hard to detect these things."

Zisser said Iran has provided Hezbollah with an advanced arsenal of rockets, which is likely to be offered to Hamas as well.

Hezbollah, moreover, smuggles Iranian money into the occupied Palestinian territories to encourage Palestinians to kills Jews, for which they earn $10,000 dollars, Kedar said. Injuries to Jews merit $5,000.

The Iranian government's long association with Hezbollah provides a glimpse of how a relationship between Iran and Hamas could evolve.

During the early 1980s, Iran and Syria sought to use Shia Muslims in Lebanon in the midst of a civil war between Muslims and Christians as a proxy force against Israel. Hezbollah has since grown into a formidable terrorist organization launching devastating bombings around the world.

"You have a very strong group that is not fully controlled by the Iranian government ... but Hezbollah obeys commands from Iran. Hezbollah is a legitimate player in Lebanon. It's part of the government in the eyes of the international community," Zisser said.

It will take many years to cement a similar bond between Iran and Hamas, he said, which may be hampered by the fact the two groups represent different sides of the same Muslim coin.

Some analysts say the world will ultimately regard a possible Iranian stranglehold on the Palestinian Authority, as the lesser of the two evils, with control by Al-Qaeda the greater evil.

An eventual showdown between the two forces within Palestinian borders may be in the offing. Their disdain for each other revolves around the fact that Iran is Shia and Al-Qaeda is Sunni. Last week's statements by the Israeli military and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas suggest Al-Qaeda may have already made its debut in the territories.

If this is the case, Al-Qaeda's presence ultimately will mean more devastating blows to Israel, as "hundreds of killed people in one attack is OK with them," Kedar said.

It will be up to a Hamas government to choose between turning into another version of Hezbollah under Iran's sponsorship, or becoming the next Al-Qaeda branch, he said. "In both cases this will be a terror state, as Afghanistan was until 2002."

Hamas, however, is quickly distancing itself from other regimes and governments that may wish to manipulate the party politically and lure it into political disputes. Ghazi Hamed, editor of Hamas' Al-Risala newspaper in Gaza, says Hamas has always maintained its sole commitment to fight for an independent state.

But with news in recent days of Al-Qaeda's presence, and revelations of a foreign Shia group operating in the Sunni-dominated Palestinian Authority, it seems Hamas will have a fight on its hands to ward off outside interference.