On June 3, 2011, the Egyptian daily Al-Masri Al-Yawm published an interview with Abu Al-Baraa, who presented himself as a senior operative in the Salafi-jihadi movement in Gaza. The paper described him as one of the founders of the Salafi-jihadi group Jaysh Al-Islam, which is affiliated with the global jihad movement and associated with the Gazan Dughmush clan.
In the interview, Abu Al-Baraa took pains to glorify himself and his group by creating an aura of secrecy and mystery around the Salafis and their actions. For instance, according to the daily, he played a recording of an Israeli Mossad agent making telephone threats to assassinate him.
Claiming to speak on behalf of all the Salafi militias in Gaza, Abu Al-Baraa stated that these groups have some 11,000 members (in contrast to Hamas's claim that they have no more than several hundred). It should be noted that this estimate is not corroborated by any non-Salafi source. Abu Al-Baraa also claimed that there is a body coordinating all the Salafi groups in Gaza; this claim too is uncorroborated. Abu Al-Baraa implied that during periods of escalation in the conflict with Israel, Jaysh Al-Islam is given permission to attack Israeli targets.
As for the relations between the Salafi-jihadi groups and Al-Qaeda, Abu Al-Baraa stressed that the Gazan Salafis have ideological ties with Al-Qaeda but no organizational ties, and also emphasized that the Gazan groups focus on the local conflict with Israel, rather than on global jihad.
