Sinai spree prods Hamas to act against Gaza jihadis

GAZA (Reuters) - Tensions between Hamas and Gaza's more radical Islamists were strained to breaking point by a gun attack in Egypt blamed in part on infiltrators from the Palestinian enclave.

Hamas, once hopeful of building an alliance with Egypt now ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood, its ideological kin, and of ending the blockade on the Gaza Strip, is now under pressure to show it can bring Salafi militants under control.

The Palestinian Islamist movement, which has governed Gaza since 2007, denied Egyptian and Israeli charges that some of the gunmen who raided a Sinai police post and then tried to storm into Israel on Sunday came from its side of the border.

But with Cairo incensed at the death of 16 border personnel, Hamas said on Monday it was arresting radical Salafi Islamists in Gaza and shutting down the around 1,000 smuggling tunnels to the Egyptian Sinai.

The Gazan government's spokesman Taher Al-Nono said steps were being taken "to help uncover the perpetrators" in coordination with Egypt. He said "no Palestinian could take part in such an ugly crime".

Hamas interior ministry spokesman Ehab Al-Ghsain blamed Israel for the attack "whether directly or through collaborators infiltrating those ... groups".

While Hamas and the Salafis share hostility to the Jewish state, the former works within the framework of Palestinian nationalism while the latter subscribe to the globalised holy war popularized by al Qaeda and unfettered by realpolitik.

A Salafi group called "Magles Shoura al-Mujahddin," which claimed a deadly June attack on Israel from Sinai, said in a video statement that it recognized neither Israel nor "claimed or imagined borders between Muslim countries".

That kind of thinking unsettles Egypt, which has been at pains to restore order since secular, U.S.-aligned President Hosni Mubarak was toppled by a citizen revolt last year.

Hamas, which won a Palestinian vote in 2006 only to battle its secular rivals for control over Gaza, is keen to show Cairo it is in control.

ENEMIES

Past Hamas sweeps against the armed Salafis, who often try to fire rockets into Israel in defiance of de facto Palestinian truces, have often been low-key, to avoid the appearance of collaboration with the Israeli enemy.

Crackdowns were more overt when Salafis targeted Gaza women and Christians in religious vigilante attacks or, in the case of one imam in 2009, declared secession from Hamas. That incident drew a Hamas raid on the cleric's mosque which killed 28 people.

"The growth of these characters should have been prevented. Their ability to sabotage the Palestinian national cause should have been blocked long ago," said Gaza-based political analyst Hani Habib.

"Legal action should be taken against them in order to spare Palestinian blood and preserve the national security of Egypt, which has always been the Palestinians' major supporter in the Middle East."

The risk of a possible rift in relations with neighbouring nations was illustrated by the anti-Palestinian sentiment that immediately surfaced in Egypt's Sinai border towns.

"Since yesterday, people in Arish, Sheikh Zuwaid and Rafah are forcing Palestinians to return home, and those who are caught are beaten up," said a resident of Sheikh Zuwaid, declining to be named.

Gazans expressed remorse for the dead Egyptians but the deputy chief of Hamas, Moussa Abu Marzouk, who himself lives in exile in Cairo, criticized Egypt for subsequently shutting its border "indefinitely" with the Palestinian territory.

That decision, which along with Hamas's tunnel closures drove Palestinians to stockpile petrol and other scarce imported goods, was deemed "collective punishment" by Abu Marzouk.

In a statement on his Facebook page, he urged Egypt instead to impose "control and sovereignty over the entire Sinai" - a demand long made by Israel as well.

(Additional reporting by Tamim Elyan in Cairo; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Robin Pomeroy)