While Hamas and ISIS are both rightly classified by the US as terrorist groups, both target civilians, and both espouse Islamic and Arab supremacism, that does not make them at all linked, much less identical.
The two groups are totally distinct. It's not just that there is no known connection, operational or otherwise, between Hamas and ISIS, although there isn't. They ultimately follow very different ideologies: Hamas will talk about Islamist extremism, but it is ultimately a Palestinian nationalist group first and foremost, one that is fighting to establish its vision of a Palestinian state.
...ISIS, on the other hand, comes from the same ideological strain as al-Qaeda, a jihadist movement called Salafism, which rejects the idea of nationalism and seeks a pan-Islamic caliphate.
Fathi Hammad, Hamas' interior minister, begs to differ.
We anticipate further victories, in which we shall liberate our land, Allah willing. We shall liberate our Al-Aqsa Mosque, and our cities and villages, as a prelude to the establishment of the future Islamic Caliphate. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are at the threshold of a global Islamic civilization era. The fuel and spearhead of this era will be Gaza, and its mujahideen and leaders will be from Gaza, Allah willing.A Hamas cleric in 2008 said:
The blessing of Palestine is dependent upon the annihilation of the pit of global corruption in it. When the head of the serpent of corruption is cut off here in Palestine, and its octopus tentacles are severed throughout the world, the real blessing will come. The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine. This will be followed by a greater blessing, Allah be praised, with the establishment of a Caliphate that will rule the land and will be pleasing to men and God.
In 2012, Al Hayat al Jadida reported:
Head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said yesterday that the meeting held two days ago between the President of Egypt and the head of the Hamas Political Bureau was a product of the Arab Spring that 'will introduce the era of the Caliphate'.
The Hamas Charter does not list statehood in Palestine as an objective. Here is what it says:
The Islamic Resistance Movement found itself at a time when Islam has disappeared from life. Thus rules shook, concepts were upset, values changed and evil people took control, oppression and darkness prevailed, cowards became like tigers: homelands were usurped, people were scattered and were caused to wander all over the world, the state of justice disappeared and the state of falsehood replaced it. Nothing remained in its right place. Thus, when Islam is absent from the arena, everything changes. From this state of affairs the incentives are drawn.
As for the objectives: They are the fighting against the false, defeating it and vanquishing it so that justice could prevail, homelands be retrieved and from its mosques would the voice of the mu'azen emerge declaring the establishment of the state of Islam, so that people and things would return each to their right places and Allah is our helper.
As the Islamic Resistance Movement paves its way, it will back the oppressed and support the wronged with all its might. It will spare no effort to bring about justice and defeat injustice, in word and deed, in this place and everywhere it can reach and have influence therein.
Hamas' goals are explicit - for those who bother to read and listen to what they say, instead of what they want to believe.
No one is saying that Hamas and Al Qaeda and ISIS are operationally connected - that is a red herring that Fisher throws in. And as I pointed out recently, the three groups have different focuses on how to achieve their goals. But their actual goals, and violent strategies to reach those goals, are quite similar.
