Salafists arrived in Gaza from Saudi Arabia, preach[ing] absolute subservience to Mahmoud Abbas..."

The ECONOMIST/ here

"... Salafists arrived in Gaza when Palestinian exiles returned from Saudi Arabia dressed in their garb of ankle-length tunics. Most preach absolute subservience to a legitimate leader, deemed to be the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, whose forces Hamas kicked out of Gaza in June 2007. ...... they have attracted broader interest among Gazans opposed to Hamas, not least Mr Abbas’s Fatah faction, which once ruled the strip but has been hamstrung by Hamas. Fatah’s fans flock to Salafist mosques on Fridays in part to spare them from having to recite a weekly prayer for Gaza’s Hamas rulers.......... And though they profess to limit their jihad to the enemy outside, their most violent acts have been against other Gazans. To impose their Koranic writ they have bombed coffee shops, internet cafés and salons for women that employ male hairdressers. A spokesman for Jaish al-Umma (Army of the Muslim Community), the largest of the four armed Salafist groups, calls such acts “aberrations”........ Last August a Salafist leader publicly declared an emirate. In no time Hamas forces charged into his mosque in Rafah, a town on the border with Egypt, and killed him and 27 followers. ....... Salafists for now have lost the battle. But they have tarnished Hamas’s Islamist halo by daring to query it. Dissent in Gaza is rising.

The Salafists’ one source of succour could lie among malcontents within Hamas who were raised on a diet of ideological militancy but fear that their movement is selling out. Their most prominent member was Nizar Rayan, a university professor who taught the Prophet Muhammad’s life and times while doubling as head of Hamas’s military wing. But he was killed during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in January last year. His followers, however, remain. Sometimes they help Salafist prisoners of Hamas to get out of jail. They criticise Hamas for taxing such evils as cigarettes rather than banning them outright, as they do alcohol. And they wonder glumly what other ideological compromises the Hamas government may make in pursuit of power. If Hamas is booted out, Islamists could yet look to the Salafists as Gaza’s next force for renewal—and rejection of Israel."