(TPS) A Palestinian official who is in contact with the Hamas leadership in Judea and Samaria told TPS that “The military arm of Hamas opposes the phenomenon of the ‘battalions,’ large and organized resistance groups, which are spreading from northern Samaria to the central West Bank.”
Over the past year, the Islamic Jihad terror organization, under Iran’s guidance, has been working to establish an independent territory that is not subject to the Palestinian Authority’s control.
In the city of Jenin and in the neighboring villages, there are already several hundred armed terrorists with thousands of weapons. The Islamic Jihad managed to push the PA completely out of the Jenin area and established a new military framework called the “Jenin Battalion” which also includes terrorists from other groups such as Fatah’s “al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades” and Hamas.
This framework began to spread towards the areas of Shechem and Tulkarm and carried out shooting attacks against IDF forces and Israeli civilians.
Hamas argues against the new phenomenon and said that “the battalion method, in which dozens of Palestinians confront large forces of the IDF, is destined to fail due to the gap in capabilities vis-à-vis the IDF and has already resulted in a very large number of Palestinian deaths.”
Hamas believes that it is necessary to act within the framework of “secret terrorist squads” and high-quality operations.
See related: Why Didn’t Hamas Join the Recent Jihad War on Israel?
“Hamas’ leadership woke up and realized that the Islamic Jihad has in fact taken over Samaria,” the Palestinian official told TPS, adding, that the Islamic Jihad “enjoys the most funding aimed at arming large groups of young Palestinians who did not belong to any organizational framework in the past.”
“This is a new generation of young Palestinians who decided to act in frameworks of anyone who pays the most and in Samaria they organized mainly under the Islamic Jihad,” he explained.
According to him, Hamas understands that the Islamic Jihad took over Samaria with external aid and funding, mainly Iranian, while it recruits many groups of young people without organizational affiliation and manages them within the framework of the “battalions.”
This group includes members of the “Al-Aqsa Martyrs,” the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), as well as new entrants who are recognized as Hamas operatives.
“On the other hand,” says the source, “the Palestinian Authority fails to exercise its authority in these areas that have become no-man’s-land, into which the Islamic Jihad has entered.”
According to him, “the absence of an Israeli military presence in the heart of the territories in northern Samaria allows the Islamic Jihad to establish large frameworks.”
