The rise of an Islamic State affiliate in Egypt is altering the security landscape in a critical corner of the Middle East, according to Israeli and Western officials.
Militants with Sinai Province, which has pledged allegiance to the extremist group, have developed ties with the Palestinian movement Hamas that rules the neighboring Gaza Strip, the officials said—despite deep ideological differences between the two Islamist groups.
The ties include help with smuggling and medical care, they said. Officials in Israel, which has likened Hamas to Islamic State, said the cooperation has also extended to military training. Hamas officials denied any involvement with Sinai Province.
Egypt’s and Israel’s shared concern about Sinai Province’s growing threat is spurring deeper security cooperation, according to the officials. Israel, for example, has let Egypt bring more sophisticated weapons into its restive Sinai Peninsula than allowed under their 1979 peace treaty, in a bid to help counter the group, they said.
“The relationship has probably never been stronger in terms of assistance in military operations to attack ISIS in Sinai,” Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said after meetings with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and other Egyptian security officials in Cairo recently. ISIS is another name for Islamic State.
The developments show that Islamic State is able to build relationships and shape events far afield even as the group’s control over territory in Syria and Iraq is weakening, just as the recent attacks in Brussels and Paris linked to the group demonstrated its lethal reach.
Sinai Province was created by up to 1,000 jihadists with a group previously known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis that pledged allegiance to Islamic State in November 2014. The group, based in Sinai, has launched a number of deadly attacks in Egypt and claimed responsibility for blowing up a Russian jet in October, killing 224 people.
The group is in regular contact with Islamic State’s leadership, which helps fund the local affiliate and promote it through Islamic State’s extensive social-media network, according to Israeli officials, Egyptian security officials and independent researchers. The extent to which Islamic State is involved in coordinating operations with Sinai Province is unknown.
Sinai Province and Hamas are both Sunni Muslim-led groups, but Hamas doesn’t share the same strict interpretation of Islam.
Sinai Province operates in territory on the peninsula where the entrances of smuggling tunnels that lead to Gaza are located, according to smugglers and diggers who work on tunnels. That has led to a pragmatic arrangement between Sinai Province and Hamas, according to Israeli and Western officials. Egypt’s defense and interior ministries have said the ties between the two groups have included coordination on attacks in north Sinai. Spokesmen for the ministries didn’t comment.
Egypt shared intelligence with Israel last year about cooperation between Sinai Province and members of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, according to a Western official. Israel was surprised to learn of the ties given previous clashes in Gaza between Hamas and Islamic State sympathizers, the official said.
Israeli officials said they learned in April of 2015 that Hamas was allowing Sinai Province fighters to be treated in Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital. The hospital declined to comment.
Later last year, Hamas operatives spent a month in the Sinai region teaching the militants how to fire antitank missiles, Israeli officials said. The officials declined to provide more details. Hamas subsequently received Russian-made antitank missiles via the smuggling network Sinai Province controls, an Israeli defense official said.
Hamas officials have been meeting with Egyptian officials to improve ties and attempt to open the border crossing from Egypt in Gaza. Earlier this year, Hamas stepped up patrols along Gaza’s border with Egypt, a move the Palestinian group said was meant to assure its powerful neighbor it isn’t working with militants in Sinai. CONTINUE AT SITE
