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A Nervous Hamas Takes On ISIS-Jihadi Threat


hamStill recovering from a devastating war with Israel last summer, Gaza’s Hamas rulers now find themselves confronting a new internal threat: jihadi militants who support the Islamic State group and appear intent on provoking Israel in order to pressure and embarrass Hamas.

While these Salafi groups are not strong enough to threaten Hamas, they are making life increasingly difficult for the ruling Islamic militant group. Hamas accuses them of being behind a series of mysterious explosions aimed at Hamas security posts, as well as recent rocket launches that have drawn Israeli reprisals and threats of tougher military action. A Hamas crackdown on the Salafists killed a wanted fugitive during an arrest raid last week, appearing to erase any hopes of reconciliation in the near term.

The fugitive, Younis al-Hunnor, had been wanted for months, and his death has prompted angry calls for revenge.

“Hamas are infidels,” says a spray-painted message written on the stairway of al-Hunnor’s apartment building in southern Gaza. “No condolences before revenge,” said another message.

On a recent day, blood stains were still visible outside the apartment, and al-Hunnor’s mother, Basma, fully covered in a black gown and veil, pointed to several bullets holes at the entrance. “They killed him here. They executed him,” she said.

She said her son, the first fatality in Hamas’ month-old crackdown, supported the Islamic State ideology, but that he had never acted against Hamas. “Even if he pays allegiance to the Islamic State, what gives them the right to execute him?” she said.

Salafists include a number of ultraconservative Islamic groups that seek to turn Gaza into an Islamic caliphate. These groups have created a headache for Hamas in recent years, accusing it of being too soft on Israel and of failing to adequately impose religious law.

Hamas has generally tolerated the Salafists since they emerged in Gaza a decade ago, though there have been occasional confrontations. In 2009, Hamas killed a Salafi leader who declared an Islamic emirate in the southern town of Rafah. Since then Hamas has worked quietly to dismantle the groups.

“Now, they are scattered groups, sometimes made up of 10 people who have an ideological problem with Hamas,” said Adnan Abu Amer, an analyst from Gaza. “They could not find a popular incubator to contain them in Gaza.”

But in recent months, Gaza’s Salafists have been emboldened by the rise of the Islamic State group, which seized about a third of Iraq and Syria and declared an Islamic caliphate on the territory it controls. At the same time, Hamas has been weakened by last year’s war while a stifling blockade of Gaza’s borders by Israel and Egypt remains in place.

Analysts believe there are about 1,000 Salafi loyalists — too few to pose a threat to Hamas but enough to cause persistent problems. Their preachers deliver anti-Hamas sermons, and Salafi fighters have claimed responsibility for several recent rocket strikes on Israel. These attacks have caused no casualties, but have strained a 10-month-old cease-fire.

Wary of the rising threat, Hamas has launched a crackdown on the most radical groups, demolishing a makeshift mosque where a preacher had praised the Islamic State group, arresting dozens of activists and religious leaders, searching houses for wanted men and confiscating weapons.

At night, Hamas security forces can be seen manning checkpoints on main roads, checking ID cards and opening car trunks in search of suspects.

Mushir al-Masri, a local Hamas official, said such steps are a last resort. “We are not interested in the existence of tension.”

But after the crackdown, particularly last week’s killing of al-Hunnor, a 27-year-old father of three, tensions are running high.

Abu Mohammed, a Salafi activist, said the Salafists “love, support and defend the Islamic State” and said anyone who opposes the group is “intentionally or unintentionally taking part in the war against Islam.” He refused to provide his full name, fearing retribution from Hamas.

A visit to al-Hunnor’s home provides a rare glimpse into the insular world of the Salafists. The apartment was filled with books by al-Qaida and Islamic State clerics, and the Islamic State group’s black flag is spray painted on the wall.

Elsewhere, a colored poster explains 17 violations of Islam, ranking them in order of seriousness. The poster urges prayer for less serious crimes, whippings for more serious offenses and shows a picture of a sword — symbolizing the death penalty — for the most serious crimes, such as homosexuality and witchcraft.

Like many Salafis, al-Hunnor began as a member of Hamas’ military wing. His family said he was wounded during fighting against Israel in 2008-2009, and had collected a pension for wounded fighters. Relatives said he left Hamas afterward over “ideological differences.”

Another Salafi, identifying himself only as Abu Ahmed, said the jihadists are relatively weak and disorganized. Unlike Hamas, which has received help from Iran and other regional allies, he said the Salafists receive no weapons or money from abroad.

Wearing a black robe and bushy black beard, Abu Ahmed said the group has no interest in battling Hamas since it is a fellow Islamic movement.

“Our problem with Hamas is that it wants to dominate, it wants to control, it wants to let everybody work according to its own interest. Hamas wants us to fight the Jews when it wants to, and prevents us from fighting when it has an interest,” he said. “This is the main problem. We can’t be tools.”

(AP)



7 Responses

  1. ISIS purloined rockets from Hamas production lines to attack Israel. Netanyahu marks out wide sterile zone

    Islamic State operatives in the Gaza Strip have been helping themselves to Hamas rockets in recent weeks after furtively penetrating the factory teams operating the group’s production and assembly lines, debkafile’s military and intelligence sources reveal. The jihadis then secretly passed the stolen rockets to their squads for launching against Israel.
    By this device, ISIS newly arrived in Gaza has overcome its immediate deficiencies:
    1. They are tapping a local manufacturing source to steal rockets, instead of having to smuggle them in from afar through Egyptian Sinai. As the ISIS presence in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave expands, so too will the intensity of its rocket fire against Israel.
    2.  The Islamists count on acquiring more advanced longer-range missiles by the same means as soon as they are developed by Hamas’ manufacturing plants.
    It is hard to determine how this ominous reality relates to the comments the IDF OC Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Sammy Turjman, made to the heads of the local communities around the Gaza Strip Sunday night, June 7, to calm their fears over the resumption of rocket fire in the last two weeks.
    “In the Southern Command we have noticed that Hamas is making an effort to stop the rocket fire, although we don’t absolve the organization of responsibility and will respond accordingly,” the general said.
    He added: “Because of a few rockets exploding on empty ground, the IDF won’t embark on an operation in the Gaza Strip and jeopardize the gains we achieved [last summer].”
    The problem with these platitudes, say debkafile’s military analysts, is that they represent a repeat of the mistake Israel made on its northern front, by letting the Hizballah terrorists pile up a huge arsenal of up to 100,000 rockets and missiles, all pointing one way – south.
    Hamas may indeed be trying very hard to prevent rockets being fired against Israel from the Gaza Strip, but it has not been able to keep ISIS undercover agents out of its manufacturing plants or from stealing the rockets.  Gen. Turjman does not say how the Islamists managed to creep into the Hamas factories or whether they have been able to invade other parts of the Palestinian military organization.
    The point is not how many rockets should be fired before the IDF goes to war in the Gaza Strip, but for how long Israel’s leaders can afford to pretend to make naught of the dangerous situation building up there. ISIS uses such make-believe to fuel its policy of expansion.
    Israel, Egypt and Hamas are in fact working together, out of their respective interests, to put a stop to the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. Egypt has been blowing up smuggling tunnels; Hamas contingents are out there trying to nab the rocket teams; Israel and its armed forces, acting on orders from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, without informing the public, are marking out a broad anti-rocket sterile zone, stretching from the Gaza border to encompass the communities and towns in the south and up to the international airport to the north.   
    This area embraces a population of 1.6 million and ten cities – Ashkelon, Ashdod, Netivot and Beersheba, long sufferers of Gaza rockets, and further north: Modi’in, Ramle, Lod, Rehovot, Ness Ziona and Gedera. Another Iron Dome battery was positioned in Rehovot, in addition to those defending the south.
    Most Israelis are not aware of the size and destructiveness of the long-range Grad missiles, at least three of which exploded in the last fortnight. debkafile has attached a photo to this article to illustrate the deadly weapon now in the hands of the Islamist State in Gaza.
    Since Hamas and Islamic Jihad alone possess rockets capable of reaching Rehovot, some 30 km southeast of Tel Aviv and the same distance from the Ben Gurion international airport, it is now obvious that the Islamists have got hold of them, notwithstanding the efforts made by Israel, Egypt and Hamas.
    ISIS’s ability to stealthily invade Hamas poses them all with their most daunting problem.
    (Debka Files intelligence)

  2. While these Salafi groups are not strong enough to threaten Hamas, they are making life increasingly difficult for the ruling Islamic -TERRORIST- group. Silly AP.

  3. Now the world will demand Israel be divided 4 ways. One for the PA in the “West Bank”, one for Hamas in Gaza, and one for ISIS. Hey they’re Palestinians too you know.

  4. These are akuperma’s friends that will be his neighbor once the secular-zionist regime is dismantled and the ultra-religious Jews live autonomously in the land of Palestine.

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