Analysts have been issuing increasingly pointed warning that Hamas is seeking to stage large-scale attacks in an effort to restore the terror group’s crumbling credibility, the result of a series of failed diplomatic gambles that saw the Palestinian faction align itself with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey.

Cairo’s post-Brotherhood government subsequently moved to isolate Hamas, to the point where a senior Hamas official recently complained that the group had been “sentenced to death” by such moves. Hamas’s official daily has openly suggested that Cairo’s anti-Brotherhood government is seeking to topple the Brotherhood’s Hamas allies, and officials from the group worried that Egypt might actually invade the Gaza Strip to degrade the territory’s terror infrastructure.

Hamas has since then, though only recently, attempted to realign itself with its traditional Iranian sponsors. It has in parallel attempted to reestablish itself as a prominent terror organization.

In the West Bank the terror group has been actively boosting its capabilities – and has been foiled in at least one mega-suicide bombing – and Israel has in recent weeks exposed several tunnels coming out of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and intended for use in spectacular terror attacks.

A team of Israeli soldiers working to destroy one of those tunnels overnight yesterday came under attack from Hamas. Five Israeli soldiers were wounded, with one being serious wounded. Israeli military forces responded to the attack, killing one gunman, and Israeli pilots subsequently struck another Hamas tunnel, killing three more Hamas members.

Hamas declared the day a win:

Hamas, the Islamist movement which governs the Gaza Strip, said all four militants belonged to its armed wing, the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri “blessed” the attack on the troops, saying it taught Israel a “painful lesson”, the Associated Press reported. “Gaza will be the land of hell” for Israel, Mr Abu Zuhri said.

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