He told me about his latest project: an online newsmagazine aimed at attracting jihadi recruits. Al-Hassan was prescient. He and others in Abssi’s organization understood the importance of online media outreach long before the creation of Inspire and the other online jihadi magazines of today. Al-Hassan felt that the mainstream media didn’t fairly portray groups like Abssi’s. He wanted the mujahideen to have their own outlet, where they could speak directly to anyone who wanted to listen.
An hour passed. I wondered if Abssi would cancel. There were gunmen in the room, but this time they weren’t pointing their weapons at me. Maybe because al-Hassan had spoken so openly, I’d begun to feel more at ease. Al-Hassan told me that he had argued on my behalf and that Abssi’s deputy had advised the sheikh against talking to me, but Abssi himself wanted to do the interview.
When the sheikh finally arrived, the men in the room again stood to greet him. He agreed to speak on the record and said that I could also use whatever he’d said in our previous meeting.
I was curious about why Abssi had left Arafat’s more secular organization and taken an Islamist approach. He thought about it for a couple of seconds. “My main aim for many years was to free Palestine, and that is still one of my main aims. But many waging that fight turned out to be corrupt and weak, like so many leaders in our region.”
This was a fairly common complaint, even among militants and Islamist activists, but I wondered if there wasn’t something bigger going on. Had Al Qaeda and its ideology replaced secular groups in the region that had traditionally taken on the Palestinian cause? While Arafat’s group had been a local effort, albeit with broad support in the Arab world and beyond, the movement to which Abssi had hitched his wagon was truly global, in both its membership and its ambitions. By attaching a religious motivation to the Palestinian struggle, Abssi and others like him were essentially becoming franchisees of Al Qaeda, while also linking the fight for Palestinian freedom to a much broader and more threatening ideology. His deputy looked a bit annoyed by my question, but Abssi confirmed my suspicion, saying that he would do anything in his power to “free Palestine” and get back his homeland, so he could pass it on to his children and grandchildren.
“Only the caliphate can protect Muslim interests,” he told me.
It was a stunning statement, and it showed that the idea of a new kind of Islamic state in the Middle East long predated the arrival of ISIS. In fact, the notion had been gestating for years in the minds of militants fighting first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq and elsewhere. Men like Abssi were now carrying that torch into new communities, gathering more oxygen to feed the flame.
“But after all these decades of war, wouldn’t the better option be peace with Israel?” I asked. “Like what Rabin and Arafat started?” I was referring to the 1993 Oslo Accord, in which Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin had agreed on a framework for peace—though one that was never fully implemented.
I sensed a growing tension in the room. “And his own people killed Rabin for it,” Abssi answered. “They don’t want peace and we don’t want to be the victims anymore. Arab leaders and rulers are also guilty for all that happened to our nations. That’s why we need the caliphate.”
He believed that America in particular needed to be punished for its presence in the Islamic world. “The only way to achieve our rights is by force,” he said. “This is the way America deals with us. When the Americans feel that their lives and their economy are threatened, they will know that they should leave.”
Abssi said that he shared Al Qaeda’s fundamentalist interpretation of global politics. He believed that what America and its allies had done in Iraq was a crime and that Muslims should wage a global jihad against the Western “crusaders” who had declared war against Islam. He spoke admiringly of bin Laden, and he clearly saw Zarqawi as a role model.
Killing American soldiers was no longer enough to convince the Americans to get out of Iraq, he believed. But what he had in mind beyond that wasn’t entirely clear. He refused to identify his targets. He would only say that his group was training militants to fight Israel and the so-called crusaders.
“We have every legitimate right to do such acts, for isn’t it America that comes to our region and kills innocents and children?” he said. “It is our right to hit them in their homes, the same as they hit us in our homes. We are not afraid of being named terrorists. But I want to ask, is someone who detonates one kilogram of explosives [in the West] a terrorist, while someone who detonates tons in Arab and Islamic cities not a terrorist?”
The month before, two commuter buses had been bombed in Lebanon, killing three and wounding more than twenty others. Lebanese law enforcement officials said that they’d arrested four men from Fatah al-Islam in connection with the attacks. But Abssi denied involvement. He said he had no plans to strike within Lebanon, where the Palestinian camps offered ideal locations to grow his organization.
“Today’s youth, when they see what is happening in Palestine and Iraq, it encourages them to join the way of jihad,” he said. “These people have now started to adopt the right path.”
“But isn’t the killing of innocents, women, children, and the elderly forbidden?” I asked.
“Originally, the killing of innocents and children was forbidden,” he replied. “However, there are situations in which the killing of such is permissible. One of these exceptions is those [who] kill our women and children.” In democracies like the United States, he said, each citizen was responsible for the actions of his government. The people in such countries could not be said to be innocent of what was done in their name. Even American antiwar protesters bore some blame, he said. He would be sorry to see them killed, but he viewed attacks in the home territory of countries that had joined the war in Iraq as legitimate.
“Osama bin Laden does make the fatwas,” Abssi said, using the Arabic word for Islamic legal opinions delivered by a mufti, or religious expert. “Should his fatwas follow the Sunnah,” the second Islamic legal source after the Koran, “we will carry them out.”
Abssi acknowledged having worked with Zarqawi, but said he’d had nothing to do with the death of Laurence Foley, the American official shot in Jordan. “I don’t know what Foley’s role was, but I can say that any person [who] comes to our region with a military, security, or political aim … is a legitimate target,” he said.
“Do you think you will get enough followers for your idea to establish a caliphate here?” I asked him.
“This is not my idea,” Abssi answered. “This is about the new awakening among Muslims here in the region. America has shown that this is a war against Sunni Islam. The idea [of the caliphate] will live and grow, even if I die today or tomorrow.”
When we were done talking, I asked for a tour of the camp. Abssi told his military commander to show me a few things. This was the same man who’d pointed a gun at me during our first conversation. I followed him outside, where twelve men, their faces shrouded in scarves, turned their Kalashnikovs on us.