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CAIRO — ISIL’s affiliate in Egypt is staging increasingly sophisticated and daring attacks, officials and analysts say, prompting Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian militant group Hamas to form an alliance against the terrorist group.

Hamas deployed several hundred fighters last week to Gaza’s border with Egypt’s lawless northern Sinai as part of a deal with Egypt to keep ISIL militants from entering the coastal enclave.

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That came days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised his country’s decision to build a new barrier along the Israel-Egypt border, warning that “we would have been overflowed by thousands of ISIS (as ISIL is also known) fighters from Sinai.”

The growing concerns have given birth to the greatest co-operation between the militaries of Egypt and Israel since their 1979 peace deal, according to officials from both countries.

If people have been treated like traitors, don’t have jobs, have their homes destroyed, and cannot reach the outside world, and are constantly being attacked, then, of course, ISIS will recruit more people

The question is whether the militants’ ambitions can be stopped or, at least, contained.