From The Australian April 26, 2006 , by Richard King, a Fremantle-based journalist and reviewer:
The Islamic fundamentalism purveyed by al-Qa'ida is the enemy of moderate Muslims and secular Palestinians.
OSAMA ... bin Laden is ... very aware that Palestine is a hot-button issue in the West, where many liberal and left-wing commentators seem willing and even eager to believe that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is attributable to American support for Israel. His pronouncements from the mid-1990s on are peppered with references to the Palestinians ... the reason for this is simple: these references have fallen on fallow ground.
... When it comes to discussion of Islamic politics, all roads lead to Palestine. Its invocation allows some liberals not only to contextualise Islamic fundamentalism, but also to compare Islamic fundamentalism to something they find even more objectionable: US support for Israel. It is, in the end, for the US, and not Islamic fundamentalism, that the Left reserves its most vociferous criticism....
...But to say that Islamic fundamentalism can be traced to US support for Israel, or that al-Qa'ida would disappear if only the Palestinians were free, is to play directly into bin Laden's hands....
... There is a war within the Muslim world. As yesterday's terror attacks on the Sinai peninsula remind us, the principal enemy of fundamentalist Islam is moderate Islam, not the West. Al-Qai'da's ultimate aim is to re-establish the Islamic caliphate and bring the entire Muslim world under the kind of repressive rule imposed by the Taliban in the late '90s....
Hamas has loudly distanced itself from bin Laden's latest proclamation. But the fact is they have certain aims in common: the abolition of Israel, for example, and the creation of a great Islamic state. Add to this the recent reports that al-Qai'da is increasing its presence in the Palestinian territories and the situation begins to look desperate.
... We need to realise that Islamic fundamentalism is the enemy, not the friend, of the Palestinian cause.
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