Video shows new levels of enmity between IS branches

Tensions simmer between Hamas, Sinai affiliates.

RAFAH, GAZA STRIP — Three brothers from this dusty Gaza border town paid smugglers to spirit them through under-ground tunnels across the border into Egypt. There they joined the Sinai affiliate ofthe Islamic State group, which is battling the Egyptian army in the Sinai Desert.

One brother was killed about 18 months ago, at the age of 20. Last week the eldest, Hamza al-Zamli, 25, showed up in a shocking video, railing against llamas, the Islamic group that dom-inates Gaza, and describing its fighters as "apostates."

In the finale of the 22-min-ute production, al-Zamli, a firebrand with long hair flowing from a black tur-ban, instructs another fighter clad in camouflage to shoot to death a kneeling captive accused of smuggling weap-ons to llamas.

The video exposed new levels of enmity between llamas and the Sinai branch of the Islamic State, inject-ing another layer of insta-bility into an already vola-tile region. And it has roiled Gaza, prompting two fami-lies whose sons are shown in the video to disown them.

The video accuses llamas of betraying Palestinians by imprisoning extremists in Gaza, failing to prevent the U.S. recognition Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and being supported by Iran.

It urges attacks on llamas' members, courts and security positions, as well as on Shi-ites and Christians in Gaza, according to the Washing-ton-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamic State propaganda.

Tensions have long sim-mered between the two groups, even as common interests have led to cross-bor-der cooperation in the past, particularly in arms smug-gling, according to officials and experts in the region. But in declaring war against llamas, the Sinai group has surrounded itself with ene-mies —Egypt, Israel and now llamas — and given llamas a common cause with Israel.

One of llamas' main crimes, Islamic State argues, is its participation in Pales-tinian elections, which the Islamic State views as putting man-made law above God's law. Another factor in the dispute is llamas' efforts to improve relations with Egypt as that country tries to broker a reconciliation deal between llamas and the Palestinian Authority, its rival based in the West Bank.

As part of that effort, llamas has been tightening control along its border with the Egyptian Sinai in recent months, constructing a buf-fer and installing cameras and barbed wire.

The Sinai militant group that later pledged allegiance to the Islamic State has been at war with the Egyptian gov-en iment since 2013, when the military ousted the country's Islamist government.

The group has since become one of the Islamic State's most effective local affiliates. It downed a Rus-sian jetliner in 2015, killing 224 people, and appears to have been responsible for an attack on a Sufi mosque in north Sinai in November, killing 311 people in Egypt's worst terrorist attack.

Hamas is essentially a Pal-estinian national movement whose main effort is directed against Israel. It has periodi-cally cracked down on more extreme jihadis in Gaza —who are ideologically closer to the Islamic State and al-Qa-ida including in a recent wave of arrests as extrem-ists fired rockets into Israel to protest President Donald Trump's Jerusalem move.

Islamic State sympathiz-ers argue that those arrests served only Israel.

Salah Bardawil, a senior llamas official, described the video as a "Zionist" produc-tion. Another senior llamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar, said the Islamic State's Sinai branch "does not want there to be weapons in llamas' hands to resist the Israeli occupation."

Generally, though, llamas has remained tight-lipped about the video, not want-ing to draw more attention to it. Families whose sons have joined the Islamic State are reluctant to talk about them for fear of repercussions from llamas, which dominates the Palestinian coastal territory.

"There is an undeclared war between llamas and Daesh," said Mkhaimar Abu-sada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University in Gaza, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. "These are guys who disassociated them-selves from Hamas and joined Daesh because they disagreed with llamas' participation in the 2006 elections. They don't like llamas' behavior as it doesn't enforce Shariah" —Islamic law — "and there are aspects of corruption regard-ing its rule in Gaza."

Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, said that in the past llamas had provided the Islamic State's Sinai branch with training and advanced weapons, and had allowed wounded fighters to come to Gaza for treatment. The recent shift, Yaari said, was "a typical story of Middle Easter!' chinging alliances."