While talking on the phone this week with a member of Hamas, I heard a very simple but accurate description of the enormous dilemma faced by that movement. “What’s it like?” asked the man at the other end of the line, and he offered me the following example: “Like a brother who sees his whole family slaughtered right in front of him. If he as much as looks up, he’ll draw fire. He’ll become another target and definitely get killed. But if he keeps his head down and stays low, he’ll be haunted by his conscience for the rest of his life, because he didn’t do anything.”
Ever since it was founded, the Hamas movement has described itself as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Given what is happening in Egypt now, the Palestinian branch is absolutely terrified. Its leaders are consulting over how and even if they can help their brothers, who are being slaughtered in the streets of Cairo, but at the same time they are talking about how to stay alive. It is a conundrum with no easy answer that occupies the entire Hamas leadership — political and military alike — since without them even dipping a finger into the molten lava they are loathed and despised by the acting leadership of the Land of the Nile. They are considered collaborators and a terrorist organization in every which way imaginable.
