Earlier this month, the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s affiliate in Egypt released a 22-minute video showing the execution of a man it identified as a Hamas collaborator. The video, characteristic of the group’s macabre propaganda, put the spotlight on the budding conflict between the Islamic State and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza since 2007.
That conflict has its roots in the changing dynamics on the ground between Hamas and Egypt’s government. Despite years of acrimony, Hamas and Egypt have forged an increasingly cooperative relationship in the past year, driven by the desperate situations both sides are facing.
While relations between Hamas and Cairo have long fluctuated with the times, they had largely been frozen under Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who seized power in 2013, ousting Mohammed Morsi, the democratically elected president aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.