Hamas and Islamic State Face off in Gaza https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2015/05/hamas-and-islamic-state-face-off-in-gaza/

May 12, 2015 | Danny Rubinstein
About the author:

Radical jihadists loosely affiliated with Islamic State (IS) and, like IS, adherents of the Salafi school of Islam have carried out a string of attacks against Hamas officials and offices in Gaza. Hamas has retaliated by making arrests and destroying a mosque affiliated with the movement. Danny Rubinstein explains the dispute between these two terrorist groups:

The first and foremost ideological difference [between the two] is that Hamas is a national Palestinian organization. Its goal is to fight solely against Israel inside the borders of the Palestinian homeland. Hamas’s leader, Khaled Meshal, has declared on numerous occasions that Hamas will not operate outside of Palestine. Those declarations earned the group the opportunity to participate in the 2006 election in Gaza and enter into a unity government with Fatah.

This is not the case with the Salafist groups affiliated with IS. Their ideology is anti-national. They have attacked, and still are attacking, Muslim Brotherhood leaders—such as the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin . . . —who incorporate a national component in their ideology.

It is no wonder that those zealous, anti-national Muslim groups are flourishing in places where the national Arab leadership has failed. Arab nationalism has enabled the establishment of states within borders set by the imperialists. Now, when one by one those countries disintegrate, the Islamic State movement, unbound by national borders, rears its head. We see this happening in Iraq and Syria and to some extent in Libya and Yemen as well. Is this also the fate awaiting the Palestinians, who have not yet succeeded in establishing their own national state?

Read more on i24 News: http://www.i24news.tv/en/opinion/70748-150511-analysis-the-salafist-nuisance-in-gaza