Even after the leader of Islamic State’s (ISIS) affiliate in the Sinai recently paid a visit to Hamas in Gaza, Hamas leadership remains embroiled in conflict over whether to continue ties with the group at all, sources revealed Friday.
Conflicting reports over the Hamas-ISIS relationship have already emerged as of late, with the announcement that ISIS invaded a Hamas weapons cache last summer following just days after reports leaked of ISIS officials visiting Gaza.
But Palestinian Arab sources told Walla! News that the conflict extends even deeper – into the very heart of Hamas leadership itself.
An entire class of Hamas’s politburo supports cutting ties with ISIS, including Ismail Haniyeh – former “Prime Minister” of Gaza – and Yahya Sinwar, one of the top officials both in the politburo and Hamas’s “military wing.”
On the other side: the growing group of Salafists within Gaza, some of whom have infiltrated Hamas’s governance. Among them are former “Interior Minister” Fathi Hamed and terror leader Ayman Noufel, who escaped from Egyptian prison and returned to Gaza with some of that country’s most hardened jihadists.
Sources in Gaza say that Hamed and Noufel have given ISIS unprecedented access to Hamas’s arsenal, as well as allowed the group safe passage through its terror tunnels between Gaza and the Sinai desert. ISIS officials visiting in Gaza are under the close supervision of pro-ISIS Hamas officials in Rafah, they added.
The ideological tug-of-war has had practical ramifications which have trickled down the terror totem pole, sources noted.
Several weeks ago, it was revealed that Iran had opened a new Shi’ite terror branch in Gaza – the Al-Sabireen (“Patient Ones”) Movement For Supporting Palestine, which has around 400 members in Gaza – with Hamas’s blessing. But Salafist officials have given free license to their own pro-ISIS (Sunni) groups in Gaza to attack the Iran satellite.
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