Hamas and The Heartland

By Bruce W. Nelan

The U.S. as a refuge for Muslim terrorists? Americans were startled last week when Israel followed up the arrest of two Arab Americans in the occupied territories by suggesting that Hamas, the militant Muslim group that has been mounting armed attacks in Israel and the occupied territories, had moved its command center to the U.S. While the relationship between Washington and Jerusalem is almost never as chummy as the two governments make it out to be, they try not to point fingers and quarrel in public. But this time the diplomatic niceties slipped away in the middle of an emotional dispute about the 415 Palestinians Israel declared to be fundamentalist leaders and deported to Lebanon. Washington has leaned hard on Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to take all or some of them back. Israel responded by implying that the U.S. was complicit in Hamas' terrorism.

About 3 million citizens and resident aliens of Arab origin live in the U.S., and their cultural associations and fund raising for Islamic causes are not secret. Many Palestinians in the territories depend on remittances from relatives in the U.S. for personal and institutional needs. Some of the donors are politically active and anti-Israel as well. But no one before had suggested that they directed the attacks claimed by fundamentalist groups that have resulted in the death of eight Israeli soldiers in the past two months.

Rather than come right out with it, the Israelis hinted at and leaked their charge after Mohammad Jarad and Mohammad Salah, two naturalized Americans, were arrested as Hamas organizers in the occupied territories. Ehud Yaari, an Arab affairs commentator for the state-run Israel Television, said a shaken Hamas leadership had selected the U.S. as a safe haven and moved its "nerve center" there from the occupied territories. The Hamas militant underground, he said, consisted of four regional commands now directed from the U.S. headquarters.

The government press office in Jerusalem released a diagram of how officials depicted the structure of Hamas: at the top is the "U.S. leadership," from which its tentacles extend into the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as several Arab states and Iran. Two Israeli newspapers reproduced the chart, and all the dailies shouted the news of the arrests from their front page.

Though Jarad and Salah are being held without charge and have had no access to attorneys, Israeli authorities say their guilt is clear from their "confessions" and the documents they had with them. The Israelis say the two men met with Hamas leaders in Virginia and London before they arrived in Israel in mid-January. Then they contacted Hamas activists in the territories, passing out money and "specific instructions to carry out terrorist operations." The Israelis claim that they found minutes of those meetings and $100,000 in cash in Salah's room at the Y.M.C.A. in East Jerusalem. As a result of this investigation, Israelis say, 40 more Hamas members have been arrested. The point they emphasize is that Jarad and Salah arrived not only with money but also with directives, indicating a commanding role for Hamas leaders in the U.S.

Both of the arrested men are from the Chicago area, and their friends and families say they went to Jerusalem to visit relatives. "We've never been involved with politics," says Jarad's wife Amal. Her husband, she says, works 11 hours a day, six days a week "in front of the public" at the Holy Land Bakery and Grocery on Chicago's North Side. Salah is a used-car salesman.

The FBI has confirmed that Hamas raises small amounts of money from Arab communities in California, Texas and other parts of the country. But agents have found no evidence that Hamas military activities are commanded or directed from the U.S. A State Department spokesman says that while Hamas has American sympathizers, "we have no evidence to prove that Hamas terrorist operations are working out of the U.S."

One well-informed expert is Vincent Cannistraro, head of counterterrorism at the CIA during the Bush Administration. "Command and control of Hamas," he says, "is not coming from the U.S. There are not more than 10 or 15 members here, and there is no operational nerve center here." He believes that the headquarters is in Iran and that most of the funding comes from Arab states in the Middle East. Bruce Hoffman, the Rand Corp.'s terrorism expert, says, "I'd look to Tehran or Damascus as the control center." As to financing, Hoffman adds, "My suspicion is that the money Hamas is getting from Iran, and perhaps Syria as well, dwarfs anything they are raising in the U.S."

Hamas is actually a homegrown movement, born in the Gaza Strip a few years ago as an answer to Israel's occupation and the perceived ineptitude of the , Palestine Liberation Organization. Israel treated the movement with benign neglect until it turned violent in 1991. Then the government began deporting its leaders, and that sent others running for the border.

While playing up the story of the arrested Americans to the hilt, Israeli officials are now throttling back on the larger charges of a U.S. command base for Hamas. "I'm not trying to tell you this is a fixed organization with headquarters in the States," said Uri Dromi, head of the government press office. "But this is proof of the first seeds of some attempt to centralize the organization and run it from one place." Said a senior Israeli security official: "I don't think Hamas is run only from the U.S., but the U.S. is part of the command of this organization."

Israeli officials may have publicized the theory about Hamas' ties in the U.S. and the arrests of the Americans in order to deflect attention from the fracas over the deported Palestinians. The U.S. -- and most of the world -- thought the move was a blunder, putting Israel on the defensive. "We've had to conduct an uphill struggle to make our case understandable," says Dromi. "The more facts that expose the nature and magnitude of this threat, the better Israel's case."

In making that case, Jerusalem apparently sought to turn some of the heat on Washington for allegedly harboring terrorists. About 10,000 Palestinians in the territories hold U.S. passports. In the past three years, Israel has arrested more than 30 of them, but as a rule has played down their American connection. Israeli security officials also informed their political bosses last year, well before the deportations, that money was flowing from U.S. donors to Hamas, but it was not useful to make such information public then. Last week it was, as part of an attempt to protect Jerusalem's interests by blaming the U.S. for not doing enough to safeguard Israel's security.

With reporting by Lisa Beyer/Jerusalem and Ann Blackman/Washington