February 14, 2002	Thursday	Zilhaj 1, 1422

CAIRO: The United State’s campaign against terrorism has started to generate strong resistance in the Middle East. The shift comes amid new accusations that Lebanon may be harbouring Al Qaeda members and American moves to freeze the assets of militant groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

In the latest salvo of accusations, The London Times reported on Feb 1 that Al Qaeda was trying to move its operations to Lebanon from Afghanistan, where the United States has waged a war aimed at destroying Osama bin Laden and his network.

Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik al-Hariri, dismissed as ”pure lies” media reports claiming that Osama’s Al Qaeda network was trying to transfer its operations from Afghanistan to Lebanon. “There is no party that feels the burden of this oppressive campaign and its ferocity as Lebanon feels. The Israeli and American newspapers are waging campaigns against Lebanon to tie it to global terrorism,” Hariri said in a speech to parliament.

Arab governments oppose the mounting accusations from Washington that radical groups, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, are terrorist. Instead, they are seen in the Arab World as resistance fighters, struggling against Israeli occupation, according to government officials and analysts. “The groups fighting Israel are resistance fighters,” Ahmed Khalil, a news stand employee in Cairo, said. “They are defending the Arab people against Israeli aggression.”

With popular support for Hezbollah and Hamas throughout the region, it is by no coincidence, then, that as President Bush was pointing his finger at these organisations in his recent State of the Union address and blaming Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat for the on-going Israeli-Palestinian violence, Arab governments were crafting a much different picture. “Fighting terrorism, whatever its source, is a top priority for our country and a duty spelled out by Islam.” Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Saudi Arabia said during a three-day ministerial meeting held in Beirut from Jan 29-31.

However, the acts of Palestinian groups against Israel in the occupied territories are a “legitimate struggle in defending land and honour,” he added.

Reinforcing these view, Muslim scholars after a six-day conference held in January in Makkah, under the auspices of the Islamic Jurisprudence Academy of the Makkah-based Muslim World League, also defined terrorism as “all acts of aggression committed by individuals, groups, or states against human beings, including attacks on their religion, life, intellect and property.”

Instead of targeting Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations, the scholars said “the heinous terrorism perpetrated by Jews in Palestine” constitutes a prime example of state terrorism. “This is the most dangerous terrorism threatening world peace and security, and confronting it is a just defence and Jihad is the way of Allah,” the scholars said.

When the US placed Hezbollah on a list of terr