And certainly there are many groups worldwide that share the same beliefs as those held by Hizballah and Hamas. “‘Global jihad could be behind rockets,'” by Yaakov Lappin for the Jerusalem Post, February 23 (thanks to Sr. Soph):
Al-Qaida affiliated global jihadi groups could be playing an important role in the trickle of rocket fire and border attacks being directed against Israel from southern Lebanon and Gaza in recent days, terrorism analysts have said.
On Saturday night, a Grad-type rocket struck an open area south of Ashkelon. No injury or damage was reported in that incident either. The rockets follow a Katyusha attack on Saturday, when a rocket fired from southern Lebanon struck a town in the western Galilee, injuring three people and damaging a home. No group claimed responsibility.
“When I look at the Katyusha attack from southern Lebanon, my instinct tells me a global jihad group is linked,” said Yoram Schweitzer, director of the Program on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).
No one could say with certainty who was behind Saturday’s rocket, Schweitzer said, but “there is a basis for a confrontation” between radical Sunni jihadi groups stationed in southern Lebanon and Hizbullah.
Sunni jihadi groups are likely to seek a defiant stance towards Hizbullah and its patron Iran in the future, but for now are establishing their presence by occasionally firing on Israel, Schweitzer said.
Al-Qaida affiliated groups like Fatah al-Islam and Asbat al-Ansar recruit their members from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, where disaffected residents embrace an extremist ideology, Schweitzer added….