Middle Eastern terrorist groups and their state sponsors continued to plan, train for, and carry out acts of terrorism throughout 2000. The last few months of the year brought a significant increase in the overall level of political violence and terrorism in the region, especially in Israel and the occupied territories. Much of the late-year increase in violence was driven by a breakdown in negotiations and counterterrorism cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The breakdown sparked a cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians that continued to spiral at the end of the year.

Israeli-Palestinian violence also prompted widespread anger at Israel, as well as the United States, throughout the Middle East, demonstrated in part by numerous, occasionally violent protests against US interests in several Middle Eastern countries. Palestinian terrorist groups, with the assistance of Iran and the Lebanese Hizballah, took advantage of Palestinian and regional anger to escalate their terrorist attacks against Israeli targets.

Other terrorists also keyed on Israeli-Palestinian difficulties to increase their rhetorical and operational activities against Israel and the United States. Usama Bin Laden's al-Qaida (Arabic for "the base"), organization, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups that focus on US and Israeli targets escalated their efforts to conduct and promote terrorism in the Middle East. Several disrupted plans to attack US and Israeli targets in the Middle East purportedly were intended to demonstrate anger over Israel's sometimes disproportionate use of force to contain protests and perceptions that the United States "allowed" Israel to act.

Al-Qaida and its affiliates especially used their ability to provide money and training as leverage to establish ties to and build the terrorist capabilities of a variety of small Middle Eastern terrorist groups such as the Lebanese Asbat al-Ansar.

Over the past six years al-Qaida has evolved from a regional threat to U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf to a global threat to U.S. citizens and national security interests. In building this network, Bin Laden has assembled a coalition of disparate radical Islamic groups of varying nationalities to work toward common goals - the expulsion of non-Muslim control or influence from Muslim-inhabited lands. The network’s ideology, laid out in several pronouncements signed by Bin Laden and his allies, has led Bin Laden to support Islamic fighters or terrorists against Serb forces in Bosnia; against Soviet forces in Afghanistan and now Russian forces in Chechnya; against Indian control over part of Kashmir; against secular or pro-Western governments in Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan; and against U.S. troops and citizens in the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Yemen, Jordan, and against the U.S. mainland itself.

The backbone of the Saudi dissident’s network is the ideological and personal bond among the Arab volunteers who were recruited by Bin Laden for the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989). Financially, it draws on the personal fortune of Bin Laden, estimated at about $300 million, but also reportedly including funding from many other sources. Al-Qaida now encompasses members and factions of several major Islamic militant organizations, including Egypt’s Islamic Group and Al-Jihad, Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group, Pakistan’s Harakat ul-Mujahidijn, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and opposition groups in Saudi Arabia. The network reportedly also has links to the Abu Sayyaf; Islamic separatist group in the Philippines.

Bin Laden's network has been connected to a number of acts of terrorism. Bin Laden himself has been indicted by a U.S. court for involvement in several of them. (For detailed information see Terrorism: Near Eastern Groups and State Sponsors).