Whether or not the media reports on the expulsion of Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal from Qatar were accurate, it is clear now that things are less hospitable for the Islamist movement in the emirate which, until not long ago, was its main supporter.
A CNN report on Monday based on "sources close to Hamas" said that Mashal, along with seven members of Hamas's parent organisation, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, had been thrown out of the country.
It was greeted by an official Israeli statement congratulating the Qataris for their decision and calling on the Turkish government to go down the same path and cease sheltering Hamas members.
Hamas officials, however, were quick to deny the report, insisting that Mashal was still there.
What cannot be denied is that, in recent weeks, there has been a rapprochement between the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, which for the past few years has been a patron of the Brotherhood.
Relations between Qatar and Egypt have been improving
Egypt's president Abdel Fattah a-Sisi met the Emir of Qatar last month in what was widely seen as a Qatari acknowledgment that the current situation in Egypt, where the military is now firmly back in power and the Brotherhood is outlawed, is irreversible in the foreseeable future.
Even before the meeting, Qatar had announced it was expelling senior Brotherhood officials who had sheltered there following the military coup in Egypt in 2013.
An immediate result of the warmer relations has been a toning-down of the rhetoric on the Qatari television network, Al Jazeera, regarding Egypt and the decision to shut down its Cairo-based channel set up in 2011 to cover unrest.
Hopes have also been raised for the release of three Al Jazeera journalists, Peter Greste, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohammad, who have been in an Egyptian jail for a year for "damaging national security".
An Egyptian court ruled last week that their case would be retried.
The developments leave Hamas on an unsure footing in Qatar, after years of receiving billions of dollars of aid and major diplomatic support from the Emirate.
The Egyptian military has been increasing the pressure on Hamas over the past two months by destroying hundreds of smuggling tunnels under the border with Gaza and demolishing nearby houses. Qatar, for now, seems intent on joining the group of Arab nations led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia which view Hamas as a destabilising force in the region.
The Palestinian group is still working on rebuilding its ties with Iran, after leaving Tehran's orbit during the early stages of the Syrian civil war.
But while Iranian arms are once again being shipped to Hamas via Hizbollah, the movement's political leaders need a base closer to Gaza and the West Bank.
That is almost certain to be Turkey, where a number of senior officials already reside and where Mashal himself received a hero's welcome when he spoke at a rally of the ruling Justice and Development Party to "liberate Palestine and Jerusalem" along with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
