Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

• The Islamic State (ISIS) has influenced and worked with Hamas through its geographically close branch in Sinai, Egypt.

• The signs of ISIS radicalization have also been seen in the West Bank.

• Palestinian Islamist extremists have had longstanding connections with ISIS.

• Palestinian Authority corruption has fueled extremism among disillusioned youth who are heavily influenced and radicalized by recruitment materials on social media.

• In the past, the Iranian regime, which now fuels the current war against Israel on multiple fronts, has encouraged the infiltration of ISIS, to radicalize areas of the Middle East, create “power vacuums,” and prepare the ground for an Iranian takeover.

Since the October 7, 2023, massacre, the State of Israel has designated Hamas as equivalent to ISIS, (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), or Daesh, in Arabic. The radical Islamic organization formed a terror state in Iraq and Syria in 2013, though it could be said that Hamas’s attacks on civilians were even more brutal and extreme than those perpetrated by ISIS.¹ Unknown to most observers, ISIS affiliates directly influenced, and perhaps even helped precipitate and perpetrate the October 7 massacres, rapes, tortures, and kidnappings in the Gaza envelope. A news story that appeared on Rosh Hashana this year brought this reality home: a Yazidi woman who was captured by ISIS in 2014 at the age of 11 and trafficked to a Gaza man with ISIS connections while visiting Iraq, was rescued by Israel Defense Forces in cooperation with others, after 10 years of slavery, after her terrorist captor was killed.²

ISIS’s power is growing in Judea and Samaria³

Wilayat Sinai and Hamas

ISIS has branched out to other areas in the Middle East, such as the Sinai Peninsula. As Salafi Muslims, ISIS does not generally collaborate with the Muslim Brotherhood, viewing MB’s political Islam apostatic.

ISIS mujahideen began to develop a stronghold in Sinai during the short term (2012-2013) of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who was closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Sinai ISIS (Wilayat Sinai, literally “Sinai Administrative Division”) reached a peak of activity around 2016, with 1,500 fighters; by 2022-2023 only between 100 and 500 personnel were detected.⁴

Salafis are uncompromising in their belief in jihad to attain the establishment of a global caliphate. Yet, Wilayat Sinai has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood-associated Hamas.⁵ Despite differing approaches, Wilayat Sinai has collaborated with Hamas in weapons trade and smuggling.⁶

After Morsi was ousted, the cooperative Muslim Brotherhood-ISIS relationship that had developed ended. Instead, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi worked to counter terror in Sinai, working unofficially with Israeli forces and with the Bedouin al-Arjani family, who heads an alliance of Bedouin tribes that controlled the transportation of goods to Gaza from Egypt.⁷ Gazans who had joined ISIS during Morsi’s time returned to Gaza. These former ISIS affiliates helped cultivate a radicalized, jihadist society in the Gaza Strip. ISIS signs and symbols, flags, gear, and even the infiltration of a non-Gazan Arabic dialect recorded by bodycams and cellphones on October 7, proved their influence.⁸

ISIS funds its operations through a combination of extortion, kidnapping-for-ransom, and robbery, alongside international donations, particularly from Africa and Asia. It has increasingly turned to virtual assets for transferring funds, offering greater security and efficiency compared to traditional cash transfers.⁹

In past years, besides the case of Wiliyat Sinai, in general, and in Israel and Europe, ISIS has only inspired “lone wolves,”¹⁰ a phenomenon that is nearly impossible to combat, and which can mobilize anyone, including West Bank teenagers¹¹ and educated, professional adults.¹²

ISIS in the West Bank

On March 31, 2022, about a year and a half before the Gaza war, Israeli social media influencer Abu Ali published a picture of a dead West Bank terrorist shrouded in the flags of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad together with flags or symbols of ISIS, surrounded by funeral attendees also wearing these symbols.¹³

The military arm of the Islamic Jihad published three posters with 13 deaths in an IDF operation, divided by region: Jenin, Tulkarm, and Tubas. In the Jenin poster, PIJ terrorist Saeed Wahdan wears an ISIS headband.¹⁴ Again, on October 4, 2024, at the funeral of Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank town of Tulkarm, dead militants were photographed shrouded in jihadi symbols.¹⁵

Palestinian activism and initiatives in Islamic extremism are not new. After a mosque was bombed near his home village near Jenin in the late 1970s, Palestinian Sheikh Abdullah Azam, considered the father of modern jihad, emigrated to Afghanistan. There he met Osama Bin Laden, and together they created al Qaeda, ultimately responsible for the “9/11” bombing of the Twin Towers in 2001.

Part of a long-term process of radicalism in the Middle East, terror groups often develop out of mainstream movements. For example, Hizbullah developed out of the multicultural Lebanese al-Amal party. Additionally, radical Islamic groups both cooperate and compete, depending on changing agendas. Al-Qaeda, for example, was once a branch of the Islamic State (IS), which later became ISIL and ISIS.

A similar process of societal radicalization may be occurring in the West Bank. This may be why the Palestinian Authority, even while pressured by Israel for supporting terror, and by the European Union for accountability in exchange for their large donations of about 220 million Euro to the PA, or, internally, from competing West Bank factions of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, still continues its security coordination with Israel.

Iran is smuggling weapons into and developing rocket warfare in the West Bank and is developing a presence in the border zone between Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, which could prove a security weak point. King Abdullah II has allowed mobs to demonstrate against Israel in Jordan, which led to the terror attack at the Allenby Bridge, and has spoken against Israel in the recent United Nations General Assembly session.

Israel still seeks to work for cooperation with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority to stabilize threats. Eventually, greater threats will come from the East, but Israel can work to ensure they are not emanating from Iran and ISIS. In a state of active, sectarian warfare, and shifting power balances, ISIS thrives, since the modus operandi of its militias and ideological influence work by filling power vacuums.¹⁶ This, of course, poses a regional threat.

A Palestinian news website recently warned about the rising popularity of ISIS, especially in the refugee camps in the northern Judea and Samaria region, where Iran is also heavily invested. The article, “Warning against the penetration of the ideology of ISIS into the Palestinian mind,”¹⁷ written by Ahmed Ibrahim, reported that on October 7 terrorists displayed ISIS flags, as seen in video footage in the southern Israel kibbutzim and towns that Hamas attacked.¹⁸ These symbols were likely left by Gazans who joined the Egyptian Sinai branch of ISIS and were complicit in the massacre. “Many Palestinian voices explicitly warned of the possibility of transferring ISIS ideology to the West Bank, in light of the ongoing operations in Jenin camp, Tulkarm, and Nour Shams, or other camps spread across the West Bank,” Ibrahim wrote.

The article also notes that since October 7, more and more photos and videos from the Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams refugee camps of militants in ISIS uniforms have appeared on the internet: many refugee camp residents fear the strengthening of ISIS as a threat to Palestinians since ISIS supports a pan-Islamic caliphate and not a nationalist Palestinian state.

ISIS generally recruits through social media, using videos, audio clips, public statements, and global campaigns calling for increased terror activity.¹⁹ Outside of Israel, successful ISIS attacks often encourage increased ISIS recruitment: the ISIS attack on Moscow earlier this year, for example, is speculated to have inspired operatives to plan the attack on the Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna in August 2024.²⁰

The Ahmed Ibrahim article called on the Palestinian Authority to distance “revolutionary” Palestinian youth, born of disillusionment with veteran Palestinian organizations, from ISIS ideology.

This call, coming from within Palestinian society, may seem somewhat ironic, since the Palestinian Authority itself has supported terror with its “pay to slay” stipends for jailed or killed terrorists and their families. Yet, despite Sunni-Shia collaborations such as that between the Sunni-Muslim Brotherhood Hamas and the Shiite-Iranian regime, there is still very little support in the Arab and Muslim world for ISIS, except for a slightly higher degree of support in the Palestinian territories.²¹

The PA also unintentionally provides fuel to the fire of extremism through its rampant corruption. West Bank youth disappointed by Mahmoud Abbas’s ineffective Fatah are radicalized by Hamas’s and PIJ’s direct recruitment and ISIS social media contagion.²²

Hamas’s dictum of muqawama (resistance) believes that Israel only understands power through the force of jihad. On the other hand, the PA officially rejects violence, which has led to a situation in which Abbas and his Fatah are thought to have achieved nothing on the Palestinian street, with only a few strongholds within the Palestinian Authority. Yet, rhetorically, like King Abdullah II of Jordan, Abbas continues to pander to extremists by issuing condolences for Nasrallah’s death, though Hizbullah once butchered Palestinians in Syria.

This is why strengthening the PA to weaken extremists, may backfire for Israel, creating a dilemma: the PA itself also supports terror and intransigence. Israel may need to work with the PA as long as Abbas is alive, to stabilize the situation temporarily. Yet this is a provisional situation, like most security arrangements in the Middle East. Israel cannot revisit the failed Oslo Accords paradigm.

Iran vs. ISIS in the West Bank?

Likewise, the erratic movements of terror groups raise a question: Is Iran encouraging and supporting ISIS penetration into the West Bank? Iran encouraged the infiltration of ISIS into Syria, which the Iranian regime then eventually attacked in 2017. While Iran pushes weapons into the West Bank to prop up radical Palestinian movements to threaten Israel, ISIS itself opposes these movements.²³ Sunni ISIS also expresses disdain for the Iranian regime, viewing Shi’ites as infidels.²⁴ Yet, in the past, as demonstrated above, there have been some collaborations of convenience between Islamist groups under the common banner of “jihad,” with different motivations for each group.

In this unpredictable configuration, recent Israeli victories in Lebanon may provide a unique opportunity. With the weakening of Hizbullah, local Sunnis, Druze, and Christian Lebanese may be motivated to establish a new state on Israel’s northern border. On the other hand, a weak Hizbullah may allow a place for ISIS to enter. Assad’s militias are not strong enough to fight ISIS. Israel, in that case, may have to create a stronger coalition with Egypt, Jordan, the United States, and France, and empower other forces that stand against ISIS radicalism. In addition, the process of radicalization in Palestinian society must be stopped, before it breeds a new generation of genocidal terrorists, the likes of which were witnessed on October 7, a toxic mix of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists with ISIS Sinai, who wish to revisit the October 7 atrocities on the Jews of Judea and Samaria.

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Notes