By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's emphasis on the Palestinians in recent messages is a political shift reflecting competition with a surging Hezbollah for Islamist leadership, analysts said.

The al Qaeda leader, thought to be hiding near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, has been on the sidelines as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in Gaza draws Islamist attention and Hezbollah's stature and power grow in Lebanon, they said.

"Hezbollah is supplanting bin Laden as the leaders of the jihad, by winning," said James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "He is having to compete in a new market for influence, and it's hard for him."

A senior Israeli defense official said recent al Qaeda threats were not a particular cause for concern, given intense security already aimed at preventing Palestinian attacks.

But a U.S counterterrorism official said al Qaeda remains a potent threat. And Mustafa Alani, security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, said if al Qaeda failed to follow up bin Laden's words with an attack against Israel, his effort would be in vain. "This bone needs meat on it."

Bin Laden has previously championed Palestinian rights as part of his broader call for a Middle East free of Western influence. But he has focused on the Palestinian cause in three of the four messages he has released in 2008.

Said a U.S. counterterrorism official, "There's been a recent spate of terrorist messages in which Israel has been a central theme -- one that al Qaeda believes resonates in the Muslim world."

Bin Laden said in a message last Friday coinciding with Israel's 60th anniversary that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at the heart of the Muslim battle with the West.

On Sunday he urged Muslims to fight Arab governments that deal with the Jewish state. He also criticized Hezbollah, the militant group widely seen as the propaganda winner in a battle with Israel in 2006, and which thwarted a bid by the Lebanese government to limit its power in fighting earlier this month.

"CRUSADER FORCES"

Bin Laden mocked Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nesrallah for spurning Sunni fighters, and accused him of welcoming "crusader forces," or U.N. peacekeepers, to protect Israel.

"If he does indeed possess what he needs, why does he not persist in the fight to liberate Palestine," bin Laden said.

Besides what may be personal rivalry between bin Laden and Nesrallah, al Qaeda, which is Sunni Muslim, is engaged in a religious rivalry with Hezbollah and its supporter Iran, both Shi'ite, analysts said.

Al Qaeda would also like to contest Palestinian influence with Hamas but has been unable to do so, intelligence officials and analysts said.

"Hamas is a major counterweight," said Matti Steinberg, a former analyst of Islamism for Israel's military intelligence. "It appears ... that al Qaeda is trying to drive a wedge between Hamas leadership and its grassroots supporters."

Bin Laden's shift reflects a failure by al Qaeda on other fronts, Alani said. It has been unable to topple Saudi rulers, and is under heavy pressure in Iraq, where it has sought to establish a base for broader Middle Eastern fighting.

"They are losing credibility on their traditional battlefields -- they need to revive the question of Palestine," Alani said. "There's huge criticism in the Arab street and within Arab intellectual circles about al Qaeda's attitude toward the Palestinian question.

"(Critics say) they are not doing anything to attack Israel; at the same time they are criticizing Hezbollah or Hamas, who are fighting the Israelis."

The U.S. official said al Qaeda remained able to project itself beyond its Pakistan base to North Africa, Europe and possibly elsewhere through mergers with other militant groups.

Brookings Institution analyst Daniel Benjamin was also unwilling to count out al Qaeda. "Do they want to be the only show in terrorism, absolutely. Does it mean that they're feeling like they're on the ropes -- I'm not so sure. (Additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan in London, Dan Williams in Jerusalem, and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, editing by Alan Elsner)

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