Thursday October 12, five days after the Hamas offensive in Israel, images of a black banner, traditionally associated with the Islamic State – also called Daesh -, were broadcast on social networks and by several Israeli media. The latter claim that the piece of fabric was found by Israeli soldiers in the kibbutz of Sufa, located near Gaza, “among the equipment left by the terrorists”, according to i24 news.
Since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist group has often been compared to its now deposed counterpart in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State. The attacks have been compared to that of September 11, perpetrated by al-Qaeda, or the Bataclan, committed by members of ISIS. Monday, October 9, during his first solemn address on television, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “Hamas is Daesh and we are going to crush and destroy them, as the world destroyed Daesh,” a comparison which he has reiterated many times since. However, the similar Islamist ideology between these different groups does not allow them to be assimilated or confused.
If the methods used by Hamas during its attack in Israel and its abuses against civilians are reminiscent of those of ISIS and explain the Israeli Prime Minister’s comparison, the two groups are very different. “IS hates Hamas,” insists Moustafa Ayad, Middle East and North Africa director of the Institute for Strategic Dialog (ISD). “IS supporters call Hamas members ‘jihad Jews’,” he adds, specifying that IS considers the Gaza-based organization to be deviant.
Despite certain ideological similarities, their projects are fundamentally opposed: the Islamic State wishes to see its “caliphate” extended to the four corners of the globe, while Hamas’s main goal is the destruction of the State of Israel and the advent of a Palestinian state. Furthermore, the rallying of a large part of Hamas to the Shiite “axis of resistance” has placed the two organizations on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict, occasionally leading to violent clashes between the two.
This rivalry has also developed in the Sinai, the Egyptian peninsula on the border with Israel, where a jihadist group joined by the Islamic State since 2016 continues, despite repression by Egypt and Israel. Wassim Nasr, journalist, specialist in jihadist groups and researcher at the Soufan Center, recalls that this threat led Hamas and Israel to collaborate: “the Israelis then accommodated themselves to Hamas, in order to prevent more radical groups from put down roots in Gaza,” he explains. An exchange of good practices forever gone, after last Saturday’s attack: “by attacking civilians in this way, Hamas has definitively crossed the Rubicon”, concludes Wassim Nasr who also observes that the latest edition of the newspaper of the Islamic State does not mention the Hamas attack against Israel as such, contenting itself with recalling “the duty of mutual aid between Muslims”.
During the attack, Hamas fighters entered several towns and villages, including the Sufa kibbutz, where the banner was found. On a black cloth, here framed by a golden slip, is inscribed the “seal of the prophet”, including the three words “Allah”, “messenger” and “Mohammed”. The Islamic State, which has appropriated it, does not have a monopoly on it. “There are many versions of this flag,” says Moustafa Ayad. The first to use it were members of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the ancestor of what later became the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Since then, many other groups have brandished it, “including certain enemies of the Islamic State, first and foremost Al-Qaeda,” recalls Wassim Nasr. “Some Chechen fighters even wear it in the form of badges on their uniforms, even in theaters of war as far away as Ukraine,” he adds.
But then, if it is not the Islamic State, nor Hamas, how did this banner appear on a kibbutz in Israel? The most likely hypothesis, according to Wassim Nasr, is that it belonged to a member of “Jaïch al-Oumma”, a jihadist organization based in Gaza. The latter, whose name means “army of the “Umma”, the community of believers, is ideologically closer to Al-Qaeda than to IS. “A dozen different Palestinian factions, from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) to Islamic Jihad, infiltrated the breach opened by Hamas in Israel last Saturday,” underlines Wassim Nasr, “even if with regard to Jaish al-Oumma, none of its members claimed responsibility for the attack.”
