Hamas gets even more extreme leader as Gazans defect to Daesh

Internal rivalries aside, Hamas is engaging in another, external juggling act. Its leaders are simultaneously trying to rebuild ties with the Egyptian regime that controls the main Rafah crossing; co-operate with Daesh, which holds the arms-smuggling routes through Sinai; and re-establish the close relationship it had with Iran before 2011, when Hamas sided with Syrian rebels fighting the Assad regime. 

Meanwhile, a series of attacks last week on Israel's southern borders have heightened the risk of the security situation around Gaza getting out of hand.

After a rocket from Gaza landed in a field in southern Israel and shots were fired at an IDF patrol, Israel launched a series of retaliatory attacks against Hamas targets. On Wednesday night, there was a mysterious explosion in a tunnel beneath the Gaza-Egypt border and three missiles were fired towards Eilat, which were intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system.

While the only casualties in these events were Hamas members, it is believed that the rockets fired towards Israel were launched from Gaza by Salafists and from Sinai by the local branch of Daesh.

Israel officially holds Hamas responsible for any attacks launched from Gaza, but its security chiefs believe the terror organisation is still interested in maintaining the ceasefire that has been in place since the end of Operation Protective Edge.

The Salafists in Gaza fired at Israel to challenge Hamas dominance and the Daesh missile attack was probably an attempt to disturb the co-operation between Cairo and Jerusalem in crushing the terrorist group in Sinai.

Despite a concerted military build-up and renewed tunnel-digging, Israel does not currently detect a Hamas interest in resuming hostilities.

There have even been tentative moves towards a deal under which Hamas would return two Israeli citizens and the bodies of two IDF soldiers in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. But the conflicting interests of the various Hamas factions, as well as the increasing involvement of Iran and Daesh in Gaza, are endangering the fragile attempts at talks.

Israeli intelligence officials believe that despite the latest attack, Daesh in Sinai is still primarily focused on its local objectives, establishing a Caliphate in the peninsula and overthrowing the secular Egyptian regime. To that end it has reinforced its ranks and is now carrying out weekly attacks on Egyptian security forces in Sinai and the occasional terror attack within Egypt proper.

Throughout much of 2016, both Israeli and Egyptian analysts believed the local branch of Daesh was on the back foot, having lost two thirds of its men, including its former commander, in Egyptian army counter-terror operations.

Now, however, they believe that the Willayat ("district", as Daesh calls its Sinai branch) has made a comeback, recruiting new fighters from the local Bedouin tribes, as well as receiving new Salafist recruits from within Egypt.

It is also believed that a small number of Hamas members who disagree with their movement's ceasefire with Israel have also recently defected to Daesh. The rivalry between these two Islamist movements could result in a wider conflagration.