Hamas
Dances With the Devil
by Paul Alster
Special to IPT News
February 19, 2016
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 The Gaza-based Hamas
terror organization has more than its fair share of problems at the moment.
Quite likely against its better judgment, it is becoming increasingly
reliant on a controversial and dangerous relationship with Sinai Province,
the vicious ISIS affiliate in Sinai.
Most of Hamas' problems are related to cash flow. Funds from sympathetic
donor states such as Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are sporadic and
insufficient, while relations with another benefactor, Iran, have come
under great strain due to Hamas' support for Syrian rebel factions opposing
the Assad regime that fights alongside Iranian-backed Hizballah. The wages
of public sector workers often go unpaid for months at a time, and
according to a 2015 World Bank report, Gaza's unemployment rate is
the highest in the world at 43 percent.
Add into the mix the failure of Arab nations to deliver on pledges to
rebuild parts of Gaza damaged during the 2014 summer war with Israel, and
Egypt's refusal – apart from a brief respite earlier this week – to open
the crucial Rafah crossing, and things look bleak for Hamas. The only goods
legally entering Gaza are the many hundreds of truckloads arriving daily
from Israel via the Kerem Shalom crossing.
Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has cracked down severely on the Sinai smuggling tunnels in
and out of Gaza that flourished during the time of his Muslim Brotherhood
predecessor Mohammed Morsi.
In a search of a friend, or at least a partner with whom it can have a
mutually beneficial relationship, Hamas cut a deal with Sinai Province
despite having cracked down violently on ISIS supporters in Gaza in
order to keep a grip on power in the overcrowded coastal enclave. This
collaboration risks legitimizing the ISIS affiliate in Hamas' own backyard,
undermining its brutal dominance in Gaza, and providing the jihadists'
supporters with an argument that it is Sinai Province and not Hamas that is
keeping the show on the road.
Formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, Sinai Province was previously
affiliated with al-Qaida. That changed in late-2014 when the Bedouin terror
group switched allegiance to Islamic State and its leader, Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi. Its extreme, ultra-violent ideology has long been viewed even
by Hamas as fanatical, so getting into bed with such an organization
clearly carries inherent risks.
Sinai Province is believed to have been behind last October's bombing of a Russian airliner from the Red Sea resort
of Sharm el-Sheikh, a shocking mass murder that dealt a huge blow to
Egypt's already ailing tourist industry.
"This [partnership] is not so much because of a shared vision or
shared ideology but because, at this point in time, anybody is doing
business with anybody within Sinai," regional terror expert Benedetta
Berti said earlier this month in an interview with the
British Israel Communications & Research Centre (BICOM). "This
creates a clash between what Hamas wants for Gaza, which is not a
proliferation of pro-ISIS cells, and some of the deals part of the group is
doing in Sinai."
"Salafist groups are not a challenge in the sense that they are
going to overthrow Hamas, but they are definitely a political
challenge," Berti added, "especially if we look at public opinion
polls – we see that more and more people are losing faith in the Hamas
government."
Senior Israel military officials claim that injured Sinai Province fighters continue to be ferried through the tunnels
into Gaza for medical treatment. They believe this has been ongoing since
last summer. Hamas denies treating the jihadis, but is believed to have
paid Sinai Province to help keep supply lines open for weapons, including
help in clandestinely transferring the lethal Russian-made Kornet anti-tank
guided missiles into Gaza. In return, Sinai Province gets to keep a share
of the weaponry.
It also has been an open secret for some time that Abdullah Kishta, the notorious Gaza-based weapons
expert, is helping train Sinai Province to use the Kornet and other weapons
such as MANPAD surface-to-air-missile systems in attacks against Egyptian
forces.
Kishta's training has paid rich dividends with a devastating series of
large-scale assaults by Sinai Province on Egyptian forces, including major attacks that have inflicted heavy losses. The
group has an estimated 500 to 1,000 members, well trained and well
organized local Bedouins. There is no evidence thus far of foreign fighters
joining their cause, unlike in ISIS conflict zones in Syria and Iraq.
Israel watches closely from the other side of the border. Privately,
many Israeli officials acknowledge that with Palestinian rivals Fatah
unlikely to assert any real pressure on Hamas in Gaza, they prefer that
Hamas stays in power. The alternative – any one of a number of
ISIS-affiliated or other Salafist groups – could prove far more problematic
for the Jewish State.
"For Israel, the desire to avoid escalation prevents it from
confronting Hamas's [weapons] buildup openly and dictates a policy of
imposed passivity, heightened by the difficulty in ensuring that provisions
brought to the Gaza Strip, especially construction materials, are not used
for military buildup – though it is highly probable that this is precisely
the case," Maj. Gen (ret.) Amos Yadlin, executive director of Tel Aviv
University's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), wrote Wednesday.
Israeli supplies – some humanitarian food aid and some intended for
reconstruction – continue to enter Gaza. If they didn't, and people
starved, that could potentially spark an uprising against Hamas, further
destabilizing Gaza and opening the door for Hamas' opponents, including
Islamic State, to attempt an uprising.
Israel also is wary that Sinai Province could mount a cross-border
attack into its territory, launching missiles toward Eilat, or copying Hamas in
attempting to tunnel from Sinai into southern Israel to kidnap or murder
Israelis.
Hamas, though, remains under severe pressure. Only time will tell if its
marriage of convenience with the Islamic State affiliate is a shrewd move
to ensure survival, or a calamitous error of judgment.
Paul Alster is an Israel-based journalist. Follow him on Twitter @paul_alster
and visit his website: www.paulalster.com.
Related Topics: Paul Alster,
Hamas,
ISIS,
Sinai
Province, Ansar
Beit al-Maqdis, Gaza
tunnels, Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi, Benedetta
Berti, British
Israel Communications and Research Centre, Abdullah
Kishta, weapons
smuggling, Amos
Yadlin
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