We learned last week that Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have at least one thing in common. They are all concerned about the changes underway in the West Bank Salafist movement, which is transforming itself from a welfare movement into an armed terrorist organization that is actively planning attacks. Three Salafist terrorists from the Hebron region were killed Nov. 26 by Israeli counterterrorism forces in the village of Yatta after plotting to launch a major attack in Israel. Overnight, the Salafists of the West Bank became known as a terrorist organization.
The Salafist movement in the West Bank was founded in the 1950s. According to current estimates, it has a few thousand supporters, most of them in the Hebron region, who view the establishment of an Islamic caliphate as a supreme value. Despite the movement’s name, the Freedom Party never was a political movement, if only because it did not recognize the Palestinian Authority as a governmental body with which it could cooperate. Most of its resources were spent recruiting supporters, establishing welfare and communal institutions and aiding the weaker segments of society.
Like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the movement’s welfare institutions are known as dawa. The literal meaning of the word is “call to prayer,” but over time it has become a comprehensive term among all the Islamist movements for their communal branches, which act zealously to help the needy, while at the same time preaching the groups’ beliefs and objectives.
Animosity between the Salafists and Hamas is intense, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. Nevertheless, the two movements have much in common. Hamas was also founded as a welfare and community organization by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The Islamic Center he headed raised enormous sums of money to establish that movement’s dawa institutions, which cared for the needy in Gaza’s refugee camps. Until the first intifada erupted in December 1987, activists affiliated with the Islamic Center received the backing and support of the Israeli Civil Administration.
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