The Shahada News Agency, a propaganda arm of Shabaab, Al Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, reported on August 19 that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) successfully sent aid to needy Palestinians in Gaza City. The report highlighted that Al Qaeda and its branches, which have long championed the Palestinian cause, are providing limited assistance to those in Gaza who were affected by the war between Israel and armed factions.
The report is based on a video featuring Abu Zain al Maqdisi, the spokesperson for an obscure organization in the Gaza Strip called Ahrar Beit al Maqdis. Besides being noted once by the Center for Strategic and International Studies for carrying out an unspecified attack and described in an unverified post on X as a “local armed jihadist group established in Gaza City a year ago” that is “influenced by the ideology of Osama Bin Laden,” limited substantive open-source information is available about Ahrar Beit al Maqdis.
In the clip, Maqdisi thanked Ansar al Sharia, AQAP’s political front group, saying that “money and charity” had reached the organization. He described that the donations were used by the group to feed the poor.
Maqdisi concluded his address by praising Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden, who often invoked the plight of the Palestinians to rally support for a global jihadist campaign against Israel and the West.
“AQAP considers the issue of Palestine as dogmatic; therefore, [it considers] Gaza as essential in its mobilization and propaganda efforts, and reminds at every occasion of the famous words of OBL [Osama Bin Laden] regarding the issue and Western help to Israel,” France 24 journalist and Soufan Center Senior Research Fellow Wassim Nasr told FDD’s The Long War Journal.
Nasr also noted that the publication of the video served distinct purposes for AQAP: “AQAP obviously wants to make [the donations] public, as [doing so] answers the blame [cast by the jihadist group’s] opponents about [AQAP] doing nothing for Palestine and not fighting Israel. The de facto void created by the weakening of Hamas [also] permits other groups to start looking for a foothold in Gaza, and aid can be useful in that sense, as Hamas started with charity in the 1980s.”
Al Qaeda and its war against Israel
Al Qaeda has long taken up the Palestinian cause as its own, although it has historically had difficulty getting traction in the West Bank and Gaza. Various small Al Qaeda cells that popped up in Gaza over the past two decades have been ruthlessly suppressed by Hamas, as the latter views the former as a threat to its authority.
Al Qaeda has used the Palestinian cause as part of its justification for waging global jihad. One of the group’s early religious rulings (fatwas), released in 1998 under the guise of the “International Islamic Front,” called for “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.” The statement was signed by Bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and other jihadi luminaries.
In the fatwa, Al Qaeda said it was the duty of Muslims to “kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military” throughout the world, and claimed that US aims were to “serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.”
This message was repeated numerous times since the fatwa was released. Al Qaeda’s General Command denounced President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017.
“It is the oath of the martyr [bin Laden] of the Ummah who paved the way for a momentous state in the Ummah’s history; a stage in which it became obvious that the head of international disbelief, that is leading the war against Islam and Muslims, violating their sanctities, plundering their wealth, and supporting the Zionists and the tyrants of the Arabs and the Orient, is none other than America,” Al Qaeda’s statement read.
Zawahiri, who succeeded Bin Laden and served as Al Qaeda’s emir until he was killed by the US in Afghanistan in 2022, reiterated the 1998 fatwa while commemorating the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 hijackings and attack on the US. Zawahiri stated that the US was behind the wars in the Muslim world, including in Palestine.
Shabaab has used US support of Israel to justify its attacks, including the deadly Manba Bay raid in Kenya in 2020. That raid was part of a wider campaign, its “Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Will Never Be Judaized” Operations.
Most recently, AQAP weighed in on the war in Gaza and denounced the Israeli operation against Hamas and other terror groups. In June 2025, AQAP released a statement that characterized the war as “nothing but a Zionist-Crusader global war par excellence” and compared the “destruction and devastation” in Gaza as “three times what was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima when it was destroyed by the American nuclear bomb.”
In the statement, obtained and translated by FDD’s Long War Journal, AQAP hinted that it would try to provide support to Gaza.
“What you see and hear every moment, one scene is enough for us to rush in groups and alone, light and heavy, towards our Al-Aqsa, our Jerusalem, our people and our brothers in the cause of Islam, dignity and sacrifice,” AQAP said.
AQAP also called American political leaders “slaves to the Jews, subservient and obedient to their masters, the leaders of the global Zionist Crusades.”
