Report
Sheds Light on Hamas's Sinai Arms Smuggling
by Yaakov Lappin
Special to IPT News
January 17, 2019
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Terrorists blew up an
Israeli bus in November with a smuggled Kornet missile fired from Gaza.
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In recent years, Israel has waged a covert war against a large-scale
Hamas effort to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip, a
Hebrew-language media report has said.
The Jan. 6 report, citing unspecified international media sources, was
published in Walla News, one of the largest online Israeli news agencies.
Since 2015, the report said, the Israeli Air Force went far beyond targeting ISIS in Sinai, striking a "large number
of weapons transfers from Sinai to the Gaza Strip for Hamas."
Through such alleged strikes, Israel destroyed an estimated 15,000
Gaza-bound rockets of standard industrial production quality.
"Hamas's military wing was interested in upgrading its arsenal of
locally-produced rockets, which experience rapid erosion, and are not as
high in quality as the standard [industrial-level] rockets," the
report said. Despite the Israeli interdiction, "Hamas is still able to
fire rockets at Tel Aviv and the surrounding area.
Recent statements made by the outgoing Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief
of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, who ended his four-year tenure on Tuesday, seem to
confirm the report. "We have foiled the smuggling of 15,000-20,000
rockets [into Gaza]," Eisenkot said during a visit to a region of southern
Israel that has experienced frequent Hamas rocket attacks.
Hamas has relied on both Iran and ISIS in its attempts to smuggle arms
into Gaza via Sinai, using underground trafficking tunnels linking the two
territories. Egypt destroyed most of those tunnels.
Last February, ISIS in Sinai reportedly seized Iranian weapons en route to Gaza, including
Kornet guided anti-tank missiles and GPS-guided arms. Hamas has used such
weapons to fire on Israeli vehicles from Gaza. Such reports appear
to indicate that Iranian efforts to push weapons into the hands of Gaza's
terrorist factions have not ceased, even if they have been reduced due to
Egypt.
The Sinai Peninsula is also awash with arms that have been smuggled into
the area from failed states such as Libya, where arms traffickers raided
army weapons depots, and sold the stolen array of goods on the black market
to any terrorist organization willing to pay.
Had Hamas succeeded in smuggling in the rockets, it would have doubled
the size of the projectile arsenal in Gaza. According to IDF intelligence
assessments, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) currently possess a
combined rocket and mortar arsenal of over 20,000 rockets and mortars, all
of which are pointed at Israeli cities, towns, and villages.
Egypt has taken a proactive role in destroying smuggling tunnels that
link the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip since Abdel Fattah El-Sisi
replaced the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi as president in 2014. This
change forced both Hamas and PIJ into domestic arms manufacturing, with the
backing of Iranian cash and know-how.
The Israeli Air Force has struck many local rocket production facilities
in Gaza, including medium-range projectiles that place greater Tel Aviv,
Israel's financial hub and largest population center, in range.
While Israel's Iron Dome air defense systems provide protection against
the rocket attacks, recent skirmishes illustrate the fact that air defenses
are not hermetic. In November, for example, Hamas fired more than 400 projectiles at southern Israeli
civilians, killing one man and injuring several more. In addition to the
risk of death, injury, and destruction they pose to Israeli civilians, the
rockets also create psychological trauma, particularly to children living
in southern Israeli areas that have been shelled on a regular basis.
Hamas's relationship with ISIS
The recent report on Hamas's major smuggling activities in Sinai also
served as a reminder of the Gazan terrorist regime's complex relationship
with Sinai Province, the local ISIS affiliate.
Egypt has worked hard to try and drive a wedge between Hamas, a
Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood branch in Gaza, and ISIS in Sinai, which is
an extension of the Salafi-jihadist network. As a rule of thumb, the Salafi
jihadists view the Muslim Brotherhood as being too soft, and too prone to
nationalism, which the Salafi jihadists consider to be a foreign Western
concept that has no place in the Islamic world.
Both Hamas and ISIS promote terrorism and jihad, agree on the
ideological goal of destroying Israel, view the West as an enemy, and view
secular Arab governments as foes. But the Muslim Brotherhood movement
prefers to transform Arab countries into Islamist theocracies through
political processes, while ISIS seeks immediate violent revolution.
But these significant ideological differences have not stopped Hamas and
ISIS from opportunistically collaborating with each other, as well as
confronting one another, as conditions change.
Cairo is in the midst of a massive military crackdown on the Salafi-jihadist
terrorists in Sinai. Egypt also wants to influence Hamas in Gaza, despite
the deep hostility that exists between the Gazan Islamist regime – a
natural affiliate of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood –- and El Sisi's
administration, which views the Brotherhood as a severe terrorist threat.
Egypt is concerned Gaza serving as a weapons supply source and a safe
refuge for Sinai's terrorists, which is why it has pressured Hamas to cut
off all ties with ISIS.
In recent years, Hamas has played a double game regarding ISIS. In its home turf of
Gaza, it has kept them in check, making frequent arrests and delivering
painful slaps to the organization. But in Sinai, it has cooperated with
ISIS, sparking Egyptian anger.
Hamas gave Sinai Province access to Gaza, allowing it to smuggle arms
from Gaza to Sinai, and it even provided military training to ISIS. This
cooperation enabled Hamas to use ISIS to smuggle weapons into Gaza, creating a
two-way arms flow.
This cooperation also allowed Hamas to 'outsource' terrorist attacks
against Israel to ISIS in Sinai, when it tried to prevent Israeli
retaliation in its home turf in Gaza.
The cooperation did not cover up the deep-seated ideological hostility
between the two groups, as illustrated by a January 2018 ISIS video,
showing the execution of a Hamas member accused by the group of
smuggling weapons to Gaza.
That incident could reflect Hamas's moving away from ISIS in Sinai, in
response to heavy Egyptian pressure. Hamas is dependent on Egypt's good
will, due in part to the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing – the only gate
Gaza has to the rest of the world. Egypt is the most important Arab power
in the vicinity, and could choke off Hamas if it wishes.
Despite friendships with the more distant Turkey and Qatar, Hamas is
deeply isolated in the region and has no choice but to take Egyptian demands
into account if it wishes to have access to the rest of the world.
That reality has allowed Egypt to pressure Hamas to drift away from its
cooperation with Sinai Province.
At the same time, Hamas has tried to fool Egypt in the past, pretending
to move away from ISIS in Sinai, while continuing to cooperate with it. In
November, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released a document that provided recent evidence of
cooperation between Hamas's military wing and Sinai Province.
The document, a religious opinion written by an eminent ISIS cleric who
is part of the organization's bureaucracy, detailed types of assistance
that Hamas provided to ISIS, including weapons transfers "both to and
from Sinai, logistical support, financial support, supply of ammunition,
and [the] transfer of wounded to Gaza." Due to the innate ideological
hostility between Sinai Province and Hamas, the cleric objected to this
cooperation, although "he did rule that receiving weapons from Hamas
could be permitted under certain conditions," according to the report.
Ultimately, it appears as if Hamas is satisfied with its ability to mass
produce its own weapons in Gaza and remains committed to importing high
quality weapons from outside of Gaza to terrorize Israeli civilians, and
target the Israeli military in future wars.
Yaakov Lappin is a military and strategic affairs correspondent. He
also conducts research and analysis for defense think tanks, and is the
Israel correspondent for IHS Jane's Defense Weekly. His book, The
Virtual Caliphate, explores the online jihadist presence.
Related Topics: Yaakov
Lappin, Hamas,
weapons
smuggling, Iran,
Israeli
strikes, ISIS
Sinai Province, Gadi
Eisenkot, IDF,
Kornet
missiles, Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, Abdel
Fattah El Sisi, Rafah
crossing, Hamas
rocket fire, MEMRI
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