If the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip hoped that the Egyptian army would leave them alone after completing its operation to seal off the 1,200 tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian town of Rafah, this week it received a very disturbing indication of what lies ahead on the Sinai border. Official sources in Cairo revealed to a Cairo-based Reuters reporter that cutting off oxygen to the Gaza Strip was just the first stage in their war against the Palestinian organization, and that the actions they were taking against Hamas were not over. According to these same sources in Cairo, the next stage will be an attempt to topple the Hamas regime, which was described as a security threat to Egypt.

“Gaza is our next stop,” an anonymous senior official declared, and he explained that it was necessary to topple Hamas to smash the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Ever since former President Mohammed Morsi was forced out of office in July 2013, most of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders have been arrested, along with many activists, who were considered to be the movement’s hard core. Morsi has since been put on trial for charges that include collaboration with the Palestinian terrorist organization. The members of the Muslim Brotherhood protested the overthrow of their government and the banning of it, but the Egyptian military used force, including live bullets, to break up those demonstrations, not leaving them any chance to continue.

The story of Hamas in the Gaza Strip is much more complicated than that of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is mainly a sociopolitical movement. There are tens of thousands of armed men in the Gaza Strip and enormous stockpiles of weapons. Furthermore, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which make up Hamas’ military wing, are spread out across the length and breadth of the Gaza Strip, while Hamas has another 20,000 uniformed men in its police and defense forces. Egypt’s army and new leadership are suspecting that Hamas’ military wing is collaborating with armed jihadist groups in the Sinai Peninsula, which have been responsible for a series of attacks against Egyptian targets.

Egypt claims that Salafi jihadist groups and smaller terrorist cells affiliated with al-Qaeda have received direct aid from Hamas, which they have effectively used to overrun the Sinai Peninsula and turn it into a terrorist enclave, which threatens Egypt’s security. Officials in Cairo believe that any effort to retake control over the Sinai Peninsula and purge it of these terrorist cells will be insufficiently thorough or successful as long as jihadist fighters can recover and re-arm themselves in the Gaza Strip. The working assumption is that without cutting off oxygen — that is, the entire Hamas movement in general and the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in particular — it will be impossible to completely eradicate the terrorist enclave in the Sinai Peninsula.