Suicide attacks were one of the major “weapons” in the Hamas arsenal during the second intifada (2000-2005). In the last two years, however, such attacks have become a double-edge sword, with them being used to strike at Hamas on two separate occasions. The most recent of these attacks happened Aug. 27, when two Salafist suicide bombers blew themselves up beside two separate police positions manned by Hamas forces. The blasts killed three members of the Hamas forces.

The first time a suicide attack was used against Hamas occurred two years ago, in August 2017. A suicide bomber blew himself up along the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, killing a high-ranking officer in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing. The attack left the Hamas leadership in shock. They immediately released a statement, saying, “Ground commander Nidal al-Jaafari was killed by one of those people possessing an ideology that veers from the straight and narrow path, who blew himself up beside a [Hamas] security team operating on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt."

The Salafist terrorist was not called a "shahid," or "martyr," in the statement; he was referred to instead as “possessing an ideology,” by which Hamas means Salafist groups that first emerged in the Sinai Peninsula and managed to establish underground cells in the Gaza Strip. In the spirit of these times, they are frequently referred to as “recalcitrant” or “rogue.’’ They believe Hamas is an organization that veered off course, by abandoning the principles of jihad and by collaborating with Egypt, which hunts down Salafists mercilessly, and of course, with Israel. Salafists consider this unholy trinity of Israel, Egypt and Hamas to be heretics and enemies equally deserving of death in the name of Allah.

The terrorist attack at the Rafah border crossing two years ago took place after Hamas started drawing closer to Egypt. The movement’s leaders made a commitment to break off all contact with the international jihadist movement — the Islamic State (IS) and all its subsidiaries — in exchange for its removal from the list of terrorist organizations put together by Egypt. Remarkably, Hamas even chose to cut itself off from its own parent movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, just to appease Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Likewise, it committed itself to cooperating with Egyptian intelligence and preventing the smuggling of arms to and from Gaza. Almost overnight, members of the Hamas military wing, who were once allies of those “possessing the ideology,” suddenly became their enemies.