Already there have been signs of Salafi-Jihadists inside Hamas’s own military wing, the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades.
In April, Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian activist, was abducted and murdered in Gaza by a small group of men who demanded the release from Hamas prison of a leading Salafi-Jihadist. Several hours before the deadline, however, they strangled the Italian.
It turned out that two of the three perpetrators were members of Hamas’s own security forces – one a policeman, the other a member of al-Qassam.
This is “the real danger,” says Ayman Batniji, a charismatic imam at Gaza’s Shohada al-Aqsa Mosque and the spokesman for the Hamas police – “those inside Hamas’s military wing that are loyal to the [Salafi-Jihadist] views.”
Such people are believed to have been responsible for a series of attacks on United Nations summer camps for children last year, and for setting fire to a Gaza water park.
Mr. Batniji said that after the Ibn Taymiyyah trouble, Hamas tried a policy of re-educating Salafi-Jihadists in prison.
“They call themselves ‘religious’ but some of these people don’t even know how to prepare for prayer,” said Mr. Batniji, scornfully. “We sent scholars to them to convince them of the errors of their ways.”
It didn’t work very well, Mr. Batniji acknowledged. “Now [after the activist’s murder] we must use force with them.”
Indeed, when Hamas uncovered the hideout of the three men who allegedly murdered the Italian, only one of them was carried out alive. Hamas officials insist they tried to capture them, but say the ringleader, a Jordanian who arrived in Gaza in a 2009 aid convoy, killed one of his Palestinian cohorts, and then committed suicide.
That still didn’t prevent Hamas from putting up large posters at mosques across Gaza, warning people of what lay in store for any who tried such extremist acts.
Mr. Batniji is personally torn by this whole situation. His own beliefs are not far off those of Salafists.
“Yes, I believe God’s laws are greater than man’s laws, but we can’t implant sharia all at once,” he said. “It must be done gradually.”
A father of four, Mr. Batniji served for a few years as a policeman in the Fatah-ruled Palestinian Authority – until the 1990s, when he was one of the police officers who arrested Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a leading figure in, and future leader of, Hamas.
“He was a great man,” Mr. Batniji recalled, gazing on the two large photos of Dr. Rantisi he has on display in his living room “– so quiet, so respectful, but so commanding.”
The scales fell from Mr. Batniji’s eyes the day he put the cuffs on Dr. Rantisi, and he left the PA police force, joined Hamas and threw himself into religious studies.
It was from the uncompromising Dr. Rantisi, Mr. Batniji said, that he drew his great contempt for Israel, a state that, he warns, will soon come to an end.
“Israel is occupying Muslim land,” said Abu Abdullah al-Ghazawi, one of several names used by the elusive leader of Jaysh al-Umma (Army of the Nation), one of Gaza’s largest Salafi-Jihadist groups. “When any part of Muslim land is taken, it is the duty of all Muslims to expel the occupiers by any means,” he said. “There are no compromises; we must resist.”
“Who are they to tell us about resistance,” asks Ghazi Hamad, recently appointed Hamas’s Deputy Foreign Minister. “No one is more experienced in resistance than Hamas. No one has more martyrs.”
“Resistance has cost Gaza a lot of lives and a lot of damage,” Mr. Hamad said. “We need to evaluate each situation” before waging resistance.
That may be but, as Issam Younis, the director of Gaza’s Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, says, there are two sides to Hamas. “It’s quite clear that the dominant stream advocates governance, truce with Israel, gradual implementation of law and accepting what the population wants. The other, weaker side is more conservative, more salafi, an outlook many of them acquired while studying in Saudi Arabia and Sudan.”
The question is: Which side of Hamas will prevail?
