Robert Fisk: Elusive Bin Laden still has the global reach to strike terror at will

'Do not believe for a moment that al-Qa'ida strategists haven't looked at targets in Britain'

It was inevitable. It was the nightmare of Israeli officials that there would be an al-Qa'ida attack on the Jewish state.

The one thing they did not think about, even after Bali, is that al-Qa'ida would strike Israel abroad. Of course, there were political advantages for the Israelis which they used: the Palestinians could be blamed, even if they had nothing to do with the suicide-bombing of the Paradise Hotel.

As usual, al-Qa'ida did not care about casualties who were not in their target frame.

Just as Kenyans provided most of the death toll of the al-Qa'ida bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi four years ago, so Kenyans were the principal victims in Mombasa yesterday.

Children died if they were the target nationality. But the attack provided proof, yet again, that Osama bin Laden's outfit has what the Americans would call "global reach".

Bin Laden's men can strike in Bali, Singapore, Afghanistan, Kuwait, over the Atlantic, in Saudi Arabia, in Yemen, in New York and Washington and in a Pennsylvania field.

The "Army of Palestine", which claimed the attacks in Kenya, is assuredly mythical, though this claim of responsibility will be used by the Israelis. The "army" largely failed in its assault. It is important to realise this when one calculates the results of al-Qa'ida's latest attack.

The two missiles failed to destroy the Israeli airliner. The suicide bombers surely hoped for a far greater death toll: 28 November was intended to be Israel's 11 September, with a list of 300 or 400 dead.

In the event, the Israeli victims numbered three. If one looks for a signature, al-Qa'ida assuredly left its initials on yesterday's killings.

Suicide bombers; simultaneous attacks; Kenya; a holiday resort. To use the word "hallmark" has become a cliché – but the Mombasa attacks had al-Qa'ida written all over them.

Two months ago, Israel's senior military intelligence officers were privately expressing concern that al-Qa'ida would strike Israel next. They talked about high buildings in Tel Aviv, nuclear missile sites in the Negev desert – they talked about this softly, of course, because the world is not supposed to discuss Israel's nuclear capability – but they feared, rightly, that Bin Laden would try to put Israel in the same frame as the United States.

And he has. For whatever al-Qa'ida did yesterday, it set Israel up alongside America. The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has claimed, since 11 September, that Israel stands beside President George Bush in his "war on terror". The conflict has – thanks to Washington's one-sided, hopelessly biased Middle East policy – given the impression that Mr Sharon and Mr Bush espouse the same goals.

Now the world has to acknowledge that Mr Sharon – regarded as a war criminal by millions of Arabs for his "personal responsibility" for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre of Palestinian civilians – has a reason to fight al-Qa'ida.

Are there any Palestinians in the ranks of Bin Laden's legions? I never met any – and I met dozens of his men in Sudan and Afghanistan.

But by attacking Israelis, al-Qa'ida has, in effect, taken on the cloak of the intifada.

If a Palestinian suicide bomber can kill 11 Israelis in Jerusalem and an al-Qa'ida suicide squad can kill three Israelis in Mombasa, what is the difference?

In future, any Israeli assault in the occupied West Bank and Gaza can be portrayed as part of the hunt for Bin Laden's men.

An Israeli air raid, no matter how many children it kills, can be depicted as no different to the US raids on Afghan villages.

Let's not for a moment imagine that this thought did not occur to al-Qa'ida.

In an organisation to whom the idea of "collateral damage" – itself obscene enough on our tongues – is meaningless, the re-intensification of Israeli firepower is an inevitable act. The more Arabs realise the brutality of their enemy's revenge, the more powerful is al-Qa'ida's reach.

Yesterday's attack – minimal in terms of Israeli casualties compared to the death toll of recent Palestinian suicide bombings – does not change that.

Two ruthless Israeli leaders will vie with each other for the right to strike back. The Bush administration, after 11 September, will not be urging restraint.

So what does it tell us about Bin Laden? It shows that his men, yet again, can attack their enemies at will. Mombasa and an Israeli-owned hotel – how one gasps in awe at the courage of Israeli holidaymakers – should have been obvious security risks. It was just up the coast in Mogadishu that Bin Laden's fighters first took on the Americans – as he told me himself in 1997.

The Nairobi bombing of the US embassy four years ago, along with the embassy in Dar es Salaam, should have proved al-Qa'ida's strength in Africa.

And the "text" of the attack goes further. Al-Qa'ida attacked a holiday resort in Bali. So they attacked Mombasa. They tried to sink the USS Cole in Aden with a suicide-bomber's boat.

They tried to sink the French oil tanker Limburg in Octoberwith an identical mode of assault. They bombed two US embassies in Africa. They struck two towers of the World Trade Centre.

Yesterday, they twinned the Mombasa hotel with the attempted missile attack on the Israeli holidaymakers' plane. Where next? Well, we have heard Bin Laden's hit list: Britain first, then France, Italy and Canada.

Do not believe for a moment that al-Qa'ida strategists haven't taken a look at the targets available to them. They have looked at everything, just as the Algerian GIA gunmen did more than four years ago when they planned to fly a hijacked Air France aircraft into the Eiffel Tower.

Be sure they have looked at the Thames Barrier and the Eurostar and all the other soft, vulnerable symbols of our society. Because they want to bring Europe into an alliance with America and Israel.

The pathetic "clash of civilisations" predicted in Samuel Huntington's book of the same name is as important to Bin Laden's followers as it is to the right-wing American Christian fundamentalists who make the revolting claim that the Prophet Mohamed was a paedophile.

Yesterday was another step in that direction.