Israeli Official to Hamas: We know of your cooperation with ISIS in Sinai

March 3, 2017

    A masked Palestinian wearing the headband of Hamas’s armed wing

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Major General Yoav Mordechai told Hamas on Thursday that the IDF is well aware of its cooperation with Islamic State in Sinai.

“Hamas leaders: Your efforts to hide your cooperation with Islamic State’s smuggling from Sinai, through lies and manipulation in attempts to broadcast ‘business as usual’ with Egypt, are not hidden from our view,” the head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit wrote in Arabic on Facebook.

According to Mordechai, Bilal Brahma, a Salafist- linked Hamas member and top smuggler with Sinai Province, the Islamic State group in Sinai, was reported by Hamas to have been killed in the restive peninsula. But despite Hamas setting up a mourning tent for him, he is alive and receiving a salary from Hamas’s “military” wing, Izzadin Kassam, while being treated in a hospital in Gaza by Jihad Cahlut, who is supposedly responsible for contact with ISIS terrorists in Sinai, according to Mordechai.

“Hamas is brazenly lying to its neighbors and to Egypt, which works to destroy tunnel infrastructures; this comes one week before representatives of the terrorist organization will make an expedition to Egypt,” he said. “Hamas’s senior delegation may want to consult with Bilal to know which tunnels are best for crossing from Gaza to Egypt and save the time waiting in Rafah.”