Are there really Daesh operatives in Gaza?

The tiny coastal enclave of the Gaza Strip, with a total area of only 365 square kilometres (141 square miles), has been stable and safe since 14 June, 2007 except from Israeli attacks, including three wars that killed around 4,500 citizens and wounded thousands more, in addition to causing widespread destruction of residential and commercial buildings and infrastructure.

On 14 June, 2007 the Islamic Movement Hamas militarily ended one and a half years of security chaos caused by rival secular Fatah, backed by Israel, Arab countries and the West, in response to Hamas winning a majority in Gaza’s parliamentary elections.

Since then, Israel, backed by the world powers and a number of Arab countries including Egypt, has been imposing a strict siege against Gaza as a way of undermining support for Hamas, but Hamas, in return, has been making concerted efforts to keep a state of calm and security in the streets of Gaza.

“After more than a year of fear, Gaza became safe and secure,” Gaza resident Ali Dweema, the owner of a puppet shop in central Gaza, told MEMO. “We used to close our shop before nightfall and we stopped all meetings with friends and family at night.”

For me, seven of my own children – aged between six to 16 – walk the 800m to school alone on foot. When I stand at the door to say goodbye to them, I see dozens of other children walking to school without their parents, just because they feel safe in Gaza.

Behind closed doors

But behind closed doors on the other side of the new face of Gaza there are many horrible things going on that normal people know almost nothing about. Security services affiliated to Hamas, which control the Strip in addition to Hamas’s military wing Al-Qassam brigades, have been watching and monitoring every single footstep in Gaza.

Abu-Yousef, a senior security officer in the Hamas-led security services in Gaza, told MEMO that security and safety in Gaza comes with a price. “Hundreds of security employees with different duties stay awake day and night in order to get to this point,” he said.

He added: “We follow up criminals on all levels – robbers, gangsters, drug dealers, and spies working for the Palestinian Authority, foreign states and Israel.”

Abu-Yousef acknowledged that his security mission in Gaza is not easy. “We are holding the Strip with an iron hand, but this is to give people iron security,” he said, noting that a number of known security officers were threatened by political opponents. “Some were already targeted by the so-called Salafists,” he said, “but there were no serious causalities.”

During the three Israeli wars, Abu-Yousef said that “security efforts did not stop, although the Israeli occupation attempted to target the security system in order to cause chaos.”

Daesh vs security

Abu-Yousef stressed that Hamas’s security services maintain the security and safety of people regardless of any political or other challenges.

When asked by MEMO about Daesh, Hamas official spokesman Sami Abu-Zuhri, said: “We do not allow any encroachment of order. Anyone endangering internal security is held accountable whoever he is and whatever political background he is from.”

Hamas previously dealt harshly with Salafist PA physician Abdul-Latif Musa, who announced the foundation of a new khilafa (Islamic caliphate) during a Friday speech in a mosque in the southern Gazan city of Rafah in the middle of August 2009. Hamas gave him a one-day ultimatum to renounce his announcement, but he refused. The following day, Hamas violently put an end to his khilafa after a five-hour shootout with Musa and his supporters in which 27 people from both sides were killed, including Musa himself.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the incident and the security services revealed links between dismissed Fatah leader Mohamed Dahlan and Musa and his group.

Many Muslim scholars, including Salafists such as the former head of Kuwaiti Salafis Sheikh Hamid Al-Ali, praised Hamas’s actions against Musa and criticised people who claimed that Hamas is a tyrant because it is a modern and moderate Islamic movement.

In 2011, a four-member group kidnapped Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni from Gaza and hanged him to death. Hamas hunted down the perpetrators, imprisoned them, and conducted an official funeral for Arrigoni, who was mourned as a son of Gaza.

On 2 June, this year, a 27-year-old man secretly announced himself the head of Daesh in Gaza and he his followers carried out a series of explosions in central Gaza city. Although there were no serious causalities, such actions pushed Hamas to remain vigilant over Daesh action in Gaza.

Just a couple of days later, Hamas security identified the man as Younis Honnor and stormed his house, asking him to surrender himself. Honnor refused and opened fire on security personnel; they retaliated and killed him.

Individual extremists

Abu-Yousef says Hamas does not justify violent raids against Salafists or people who claim they are Daesh followers, but he insists that they must be either arrested or killed because “their existence among people is dangerous”.

Hamas spokesman did not deny that there might be a number of people in Gaza who affiliate themselves with Daesh, but he stressed that they are not allowed to be a cause of disorder..

“We do not tell people how to think and what thoughts they should believe in,” said Hamas spokesman Abu-Zuhri, “but they have to respect the law and do not cause disorder among people.”

Regarding the accusations that Gaza is a foothold for Daesh because a number of Daesh militants in Syria announced they were from Gaza, Abu-Zuhri said: “Most of Daesh leaders were originally from the West, why is no one accusing the West of being a foothold for Daesh?”

Researcher Nael Al-Awadi did not rule out the existence of individual people in Gaza who believe in Daesh’s dogma. “But such extremists recognise that they cannot have any place under Hamas’s security grip over the Gaza Strip,” he said. “Therefore, most of them leave to Syria, where they believe they can give direct allegiance to Daesh Caliph Abu-Baker Al-Baghdadi.”

Truce and rockets

Since the end of last year’s Israeli offensive on Gaza, Hamas, in consensus with the other Palestinian factions, has been trying to maintain a truce including no rocket launching at Israeli targets.

For this purpose, Hamas paved a road along the eastern border between Gaza and Israel and deployed dozens of its security guards to monitor Palestinian activities and prevent any violation of the truce.

People in Gaza know that Hamas pays the price of any breach of the truce as Israeli air forces target the movements bases and personnel after any alleged rocket attack. Therefore, whenever Hamas puts pressure on any outlawed Palestinian, this individual makes a very primitive rocket and fires it towards the border to arouse Israeli response against Hamas.

Meanwhile, a senior Al-Qassam leader, one of the five top leaders in the military wing, reiterated to MEMO that only one of all the rockets launched such cases recently was fired by Daesh sympathisers.

The incident, he said, was on 3 June this year, and it followed a crackdown on a group of around nine people who called themselves Daesh members and claimed they had given allegiance to Abu-Baker Al-Baghdadi.

Israeli intelligence

Even today, the Al-Qassam leader did not deny that a number of Palestinians might have some kind of sympathy with Daesh, but stressed that they keep their thoughts to themselves. “We do not indoctrinate people,” he said, “they can adopt any ideas they want, but if they are out of our culture, which refuses Daesh, they have to keep it inside their hearts.”

Regarding those who claim to have given allegiance to Al-Baghdadi, he said: “After investigating several cases, they were either lying or they were connected and directed by Israeli intelligence via internet devices such as Facebook in order to cause disorder in Gaza.”

He said that Israeli intelligence agents deal with these people as if they are Daesh agents and that they are recruiting people for the sake of expanding the Islamic State and imposing Sharia Law.

Calling on all Palestinians who sympathise with Daesh, the senior Qassam leader, who holds an MA in Sharia studies, noted that more than 99 per cent of Daesh’s deeds are not related to Islam and he believes they carry out these acts just to distort the peaceful image of Islam.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.