TEL AVIV — The recent arrest by Hamas security forces of one of the Islamic State’s senior members in Gaza, 27-year-old Nur Issa, will not cause IS to “raise the white flag,” a senior Gaza Salafist associated with IS ideology told Breitbart Jerusalem.
Issa, who is originally a resident of the Bureij refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip, was arrested in the city of Rafah on the enclave’s southern border with Egypt, alongside three other IS leaders.
“Sheikh Nur Issa’s arrest is part of the ongoing campaign against the jihadists in the Gaza Strip,” Abu Baker al-Maqdisi, a senior Gaza-based, IS-aligned jihadist told Breitbart Jerusalem in response to Issa’s arrest. “This campaign is meant to cause us to raise the white flag and give up our principles and the jihad for Allah in order to remain in a cycle of defeats by Hamas, Fatah and the other organizations.”
Issa’s arrest, considered the most significant arrest in Gaza against IS members, is a blow to Salafist jihadists, said al-Maqdisi, “but our idea goes on and the activists and supporters continue their activities.”
Al-Maqdisi admitted that Issa was one of IS’s most senior supporters, but said that he was not the most senior leader “as Hamas is trying to claim to gain praise from the Egyptians.”
The jihadist noted that Hamas had been hunting Issa for nearly two years.
“He frightened Hamas because of his success in firing rockets against the Zionist entity,” said al-Maqdisi, referring to Israel. “Sheikh Issa was a thorn in the throat of Hamas and all the criminals against religion, so Hamas’ pride in his arrest symbolizes the lowest point reached by Hamas, which is so proud of arresting the Mujahedeen just as Fatah was once so proud of arresting Hamas members. The turning of tables is the nature of life as Allah decreed and so, Hamas won’t avoid Allah’s ruling either.”
According to al-Maqdisi, “The oppression of our brothers by Hamas security forces who serve Egyptian intelligence continues. Hamas cooperates with the Jewish enemy because the information given by Hamas to Egypt is eventually handed to Jewish intelligence.”
But al-Maqdisi claimed that even as Hamas managed to catch Issa, another prominent IS member, Ahmad Mussalam, who was already imprisoned by Hamas, was able to escape while being transferred from one prison facility to another.
According to al-Maqdisi, Mussalam’s escape sparked a large manhunt by Hamas security forces that is still ongoing.
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