Hamas rocked by dispute over links with Islamic State, and a host of other frictions
Gaza’s terrorist rulers are short of funds, worried by Israeli intelligence successes, torn over how to interact with Iran and the PA
Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, fills the same role for Walla, the leading portal in Israel. He is also a guest commentator on many different radio shows and current affairs programs on television. Until 2012, he was a reporter and commentator on Arab affairs for the Haaretz newspaper. He also lectures on modern Palestinian history at Tel Aviv University, and is currently writing a script for an action-drama series for the Israeli satellite Television "YES." Born in Jerusalem, he graduated cum laude from Ben Gurion University with a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies and then earned his M.A. from Tel Aviv University on the same subject, also cum laude. A fluent Arabic speaker, Avi was the Middle East Affairs correspondent for Israeli Public Radio covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq and the Arab countries between the years 2003-2006. Avi directed and edited short documentary films on Israeli television programs dealing with the Middle East. In 2002 he won the "best reporter" award for the "Israel Radio” for his coverage of the second intifada. In 2004, together with Amos Harel, he wrote "The Seventh War - How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians." A year later the book won an award from the Institute for Strategic Studies for containing the best research on security affairs in Israel. In 2008, Issacharoff and Harel published their second book, entitled "34 Days - The Story of the Second Lebanon War," which won the same prize.
This week once again news reached the Gaza Strip that a local man had been killed fighting in the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria. The slain man was named as Issa Lakta, a resident of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City.
Lakta had earned the nickname “Abu Aisha the Gazan” after joining Islamic State. But in Gaza they remembered him as a member of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. And he is not the only one-time Hamas terrorist to have joined Islamic State in recent years, to fight in Syria, Iraq and recently also Libya.
These shifting allegiances symbolize the complex and problematic state of relations between Hamas and IS. On the one hand, IS represents competition, and a threat of sorts to Hamas. On the other, central figures in Hamas cooperate with IS and other Salafist groups operating in the Gaza Strip and beyond, and almost openly acknowledge the benefits of these connections, particularly when it comes to smuggling weaponry and personnel between the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza.
The ambivalent relationship with IS is reflected in the rumbling frictions inside the Hamas hierarchy between those who keep close ties with the Salafist groups and those who oppose such interactions. But the frictions currently bubbling inside Hamas run much wider — with Gaza’s Islamist rulers arguing over a host of major issues.
Leading the group of senior Hamas officials who want to sever ties with the Islamic State are former Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, one of the most prominent figures in the Hamas military wing. (Sinwar was among the most senior Hamas prisoners freed by Israel in 2011 as part of the deal for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.)
The two men, close allies in Hamas, strongly disapprove of cooperation with IS, and especially the supply of arms to the group and its affiliates.
At the forefront of the side supporting IS and the Salafists are former Hamas interior minister Fathi Hamad and military wing leader Ayman Nofal, who escaped from an Egyptian prison and returned to the Gaza Strip in 2011 along with several prominent members of other jihadist groups.
According to sources in the Gaza Strip, Hamad and Nofal were central in approving arrangements by which IS terrorists have been given access to several Hamas weapons caches. They also allowed IS to use Hamas-controlled tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula.
Channel 2 reported last week that one of the heads of Islamic State in the Sinai, Shadi al-Menei, was visiting the Gaza Strip to further cement such ties. That wasn’t the first time he had made the journey. But last week’s visit was evidently less secretive than previous such trips. According to Gaza sources, he was seen at a wedding and even at a well-known coffee shop.
The top-tier internal Hamas friction also extends to the nature of relations with Iran. While senior Hamas officials decided more than a year ago to allow al-Sabirin, a Shiite organization, to work in the Strip, especially in order to strengthen ties with Tehran, Hamad and his people have given Salafi jihadists a green light to attack al-Sabirin offices.
Infiltrated by Israel
The troubles of the military wing of Hamas don’t end there.
One of the problems highlighted during summer 2014’s Operation Protective Edge was the extent to which the Shin Bet security service had penetrated the ranks of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and concern over that Israeli intelligence penetration remains acute.
Following Israeli targeted assassination attempts on key Hamas terror figures, Hamas arrested three prominent officials in the military wing on suspicion of ties to Israel. One of them, Muhammad Labuav (Abu Ahmad), is suspected of colluding with Israel to facilitate Israel’s assassination of three Hamas figures, Raed al-Attar, Muhammad Abu Shamaleh and Muhammad Barhum, in August 2014.
Another suspect is Mahmoud Shtiwi, alleged to have given Israel information that led it to the house of Muhammad Deif, the notorious Hamas terror chief. An Israel strike missed Deif but killed his wife. (Deif is still active in the military wing but it no longer has one clearly defined commander. Sinwar was until recently considered the most senior man there, but Hamad’s loyalists follow his instructions and listen to no one else, regardless of rank.)
Hamas is also short of funds. It has suffered a dramatic loss in income in the past two years with Egypt’s closure of its smuggling tunnels. The military wing is getting dwindling financial support, constraining its growth, even though some of its commanders in the field recently seem to have become considerably richer.
Gaza residents are paying attention to all this. Allegations of financial corruption are now dogging the Hamas military wing.
Hamas is supposed to be running the Strip but is not making a very good job of it. The Rafah border crossing remains closed, despite public pressure, with Hamas refusing to cede authority there to the Palestinian Authority, a move demanded by Egypt as a precondition for opening the crossing.
Seeking to reassert effective control of the Strip, Hamas has nominated an “executive council” — a kind of Gaza substitute for the non-existence national unity government headed by PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah from Ramallah. In a Hamas document seen by The Times of Israel, Hamas official Ziad a-Zaza is named as the head of the council, and the names and responsibilities of other members are also specified.
Perhaps the biggest problem facing Hamas and, by extension, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades today is the lack of an agreed path or strategy. Senior officials in the organization’s political wing in Gaza disagree on almost everything. Policies and attitudes change from official to official, and clique to clique.
Most agree that now is not the time for another round of war with Israel; most also agree that this is also not the time for any kind of long-term calm.
Most oppose reconciliation with PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah yet some believe there is no escaping a unity government.
Divided over how to interact with Islamic State, how to deal with Egypt, how to relate to Iran, how to bolster funds, how to govern Gaza and how to most effectively challenge Israel, the only consensus in Hamas is that now is a time for change. But predicting the direction of any such change is a fool’s errand.
