Even as Israelis mourn the ruthless murder of three innocent teenagers, a new and more lethal existential threat to Israel is emerging in the Middle East.
Surprisingly, the danger from extreme jihadists who recently declared a new Islamic State in Syria and Iraq has not received much comment. But it could be sharply more lethal than Palestinian intifadas ever were.
Israel has protected itself against Palestinian terrorists by blocking arms supplies and regularly conducting severely punitive raids against their terror networks. It has used various pressure points, including US and European diplomacy and financial sanctions, to obtain cooperation from Palestinian authorities in the West Bank to prevent terrorism. It has built a wall to keep terrorists out of its territories.
No such prophylactics will be capable of holding back terrorist acts planned and directed from safe havens under the control of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who unilaterally declared a Caliphate in the areas he controls in Syria and Iraq. Two days ago, he declared himself the Caliph and asked the world’s Sunni Muslims to declare allegiance to him.
He considers those who resist him as false Muslims and, of course, does not recognize the legitimacy of Shia Islam. He also renamed his extremist movement as Islamic State, dropping earlier references to Iraq, Syria and the Levant.
These are early days and al-Baghdadi’s claims may sound lunatic. But it would be very imprudent to shrug him off the Middle East stage.
He has not yet acted overtly against Israel but his strain of Islamic extremism would not be truly purist if it did not viscerally hate Jews and the Jewish state. His group has weapons, including rockets, far superior to those used by various groups of Palestinian terrorists in Gaza or the West Bank, including Hamas, who are Sunnis.
The Shiite Hezbollah militia of Lebanon matches some of al-Baghdadi’s weaponry but may lack the blind fanaticism that drives al-Baghdadi’s jihadists. They are so radical that even al-Qaeda has disavowed them. They are also more battle-hardened than most other Islamic fighters.
Currently, al-Baghdadi is engrossed in wars with other Sunnis to expand and hold territory in Syria while consolidating his grip on land conquered recently in Iraq. He may not be able to keep all his gains if Iraqi government forces manage to confront him successfully with help from the US and Saudi Arabia or Iran and Russia. But the war of attrition could be long and bloody since his enemies are not united against him and his forces seem to possess strategic, tactical and battle field skills unlike any other jihadist group of the recent past.
They are also very well armed judging from Monday’s military parade in Raqqa, the largest Syrian city under his control. Reports of online videos said his boisterous fighters displayed Humvees, heavy machine guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers and “a flatbed truck carrying what appeared to be a Scud missile”.
Israel is menaced whether or not al-Baghdadi manages to retain an extended safe haven across the borders of Syria and Iraq. If his Islamic State survives and consolidates, he could make disrupting the domestic peace of Israel his next goal because that would help attract more radical fighters to his theological caliphate celebrating extremist Sunni power.
If his enemies manage to push him to the wall, he might see propaganda value in executing terrorist acts against Israel and Jews anywhere in the world in an attempt to rally hard-core suicidal jihadists around him.
It is shortsighted to see his rise as part only of a millennial Sunni-Shia conflict. So far, that conflict does not seem to be at the top of his agenda. He is creating a medieval Caliphate with him as the self-anointed king by fighting both Sunnis and Shias who oppose him.
As soon as he sinks roots, he may give support that is more lethal to Islamic terrorists around the world because of his religious convictions than ever given by al Qaeda, Iran or the former Libya of the late Muammar Gaddafi.
graphic via shutterstock.com