Al-Aqṣā Martyrs Brigades

Al-Aqṣā Martyrs Brigades, coalition of Palestinian West Bank militias that became increasingly violent during the period of the Al-Aqṣā intifada in the early 2000s. Unlike Hamas and other militant Palestinian Islamist groups, the brigades’ ideology was based on secular Palestinian nationalism rather than Islamic fundamentalism.

The group’s name refers to Al-Aqṣā Mosque, which is located in Jerusalem on the holy site known as Al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf (“The Noble Sanctuary”) by Muslims and as the Temple Mount by Jews. Muslims revere the site as the place where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, and Jews revere it as the site of the Second Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 ce. The Al-Aqṣā Martyrs Brigades were formed in the West Bank refugee camp of Balata, near Nablus, shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and a large police contingent made a controversial visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000.

The brigades have been affiliated with the Palestinian Fatah party, a connection that appears to have been at its closest while Fatah was under the leadership of Yasser Arafat. The group began with drive-by shootings and suicide bombings. It then started targeting Israeli roadblocks and settlers in the West Bank. Initially, the group did not carry out attacks outside the West Bank. In August 2001 the brigades’ leader and cofounder Yasser Badawi was killed by a car bomb, and after his death the group began attacking civilians inside Israel. The attacks escalated, and on January 17, 2002, a brigade member killed six people and wounded dozens at a bat mitzvah in H̱adera, Israel. A wave of shootings and suicide bombings throughout March 2002 led the U.S. State Department to add the brigades to its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Following Arafat’s death in 2004, the brigades’ relationship with Fatah appears to have loosened, although the group is still considered to be aligned with that political party. In 2005 Fatah announced that the brigades would be dissolved and incorporated into Fatah’s security forces. The brigades remained active, however, threatening to kill senior members of Hamas after it won elections in 2006 and took over the Gaza Strip. In 2007 Israel offered amnesty to Al-Aqṣā Martyrs Brigades militants in an effort to strengthen Fatah and undermine Hamas. Under the offer, the militants would give up their arms and be incorporated into Fatah’s security services. Though this led to a lessening of violence, the brigades continued to claim responsibility for a large number of shootings and suicide bombings, sometimes carried out in cooperation with other radical groups, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Al-Aqṣā Martyrs Brigades appear to be a highly decentralized organization whose various factions seem to act independently of—and, to some degree, at cross-purposes with—each other.