ISIS Declares War on Hamas, and Gaza Families Disown Sons in Sinai
They don’t like Hamas’s behavior as it doesn’t enforce Shariah" — Islamic law — "and there are aspects of corruption regarding its rule in Gaza." Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, said
that in the past Hamas had provided the Islamic State’s Sinai branch with training and advanced weapons, and had allowed wounded fighters to come to Gaza for treatment.
One of Hamas’s main crimes, the Islamic State argues, is its participation in Palestinian
elections, which the Islamic State views as putting man-made law above God’s law.
Another senior Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar, said the Islamic State’s Sinai branch "does not want there to be weapons in Hamas’s hands to resist
the Israeli occupation." Generally, though, Hamas has remained tight-lipped about the video, not wanting to draw more attention to it.
Soon after the video emerged, the Dajani family issued a statement saying they were proud of belonging to Hamas
and its military wing and describing their son’s act as "criminal" and "contrary to our religion and our people’s values." The Zamli brothers’ journey to the Islamic State began about three years ago when the two older ones left for Sinai.
It has periodically cracked down on more extreme jihadists in Gaza — who are ideologically closer to the Islamic State
and Al Qaeda — including in a recent wave of arrests as extremists fired rockets into Israel to protest President Trump’s Jerusalem move.
Last week the eldest, Hamza al-Zamli, 25, showed up in a shocking video, railing against Hamas, the Islamic group
that dominates Gaza, and describing its fighters as "apostates." In the finale of the 22-minute production, Mr. Zamli, a firebrand with long hair flowing from a black turban, instructs another fighter clad in camouflage to shoot to death a kneeling captive accused of smuggling weapons to Hamas.
The man who fired the pistol, Muhammad al-Dajani, from Gaza City, was a Hamas fighter who defected to the Islamic State from Hamas’s military wing.
There they joined the Sinai affiliate of the Islamic State, which is battling the Egyptian Army in the Sinai Desert.
