Last month we noted here that the BBC had not produced any coverage of reported developments in the Sinai Peninsula.
“Although BBC audiences have heard nothing on the topic, analysts and media outlets in Egypt and Israel have been reporting for several weeks on increasing tensions between the ISIS affiliate in northern Sinai and local Bedouin tribes.”
As that story continues to be ignored by the BBC, analysts meanwhile report that it has taken on another interesting twist.
The JCPA notes that:
“On May 24, 2017, the Tribal Union of Sinai released a leaflet in which it accused Hamas of being an ally to ISIS in Sinai.
The leaflet strongly criticized Hamas for allowing ISIS members to enter the Gaza Strip through the Sinai tunnels and for supplying them with weapons, training, medical care, and shelter in the Gaza Strip.
The leaflet warned Hamas not to assist ISIS activists and demanded the extradition to Egypt of all ISIS operatives hiding in the Gaza Strip.”
As has been noted here in the past, the BBC has for years refrained from producing any serious coverage of the topic of cooperation between Hamas and the ISIS franchise operating in Sinai and has even provided amplification for Hamas PR messaging on that topic.
Avi Isacharoff at the Times of Israel notes that:
“On Sunday, a Hamas delegation led by Yahya Sinwar, Tawfik Abu Naim and others set out from Gaza for a series of meetings with Egyptian intelligence officials in Cairo, after a long period in which Egyptian authorities refused to allow the terror group’s leaders to leave the Strip through the Rafah Border Crossing. Egypt’s stubborn refusal on the matter stemmed from a number of reasons, among them the ongoing ties between Hamas and IS.
While cooperation between the two sides has declined, and it is no longer the case that every injured Sinai Province operative is taken to Gaza for medical treatment from Hamas-affiliated doctors, Hebrew media reports and information coming out of Egypt have exposed claims by Hamas that it has cut ties with IS as a bluff. Time after time, senior Hamas figures promised that the terror group would take action against IS and time after time the Egyptians have been surprised to learn that in fact Hamas was keeping up its close-knit ties with the Sinai Province.
However, this time something appears to have a changed: a negative development in the relationship between Hamas and IS. […]
Still – to no one’s surprise – ties between Hamas and IS have continued, even if they are not what they once were. A small coterie of IS operatives from Sinai and Egypt continues to take refuge in the Gaza Strip, while an estimated 15-16 Gazans are currently among the ranks of IS in Sinai, most of whom were former Hamas members.”
The BBC’s funding public, however, remains entirely unaware of developments in the relations between Hamas and Wilayat Sinai: a subject which in the past has even been presented to BBC audiences as a “propaganda and media campaign against Gaza, against Hamas”.
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