Fate of Gazans is in Hamas' hands
The Hamas movement is at a decisive crossroads: either it relinquishes its military control and concentrates on rehabilitating the Gaza Strip or it risks destroying all of Gaza's residents.
Over the last weekend, Egypt's Emergency State Security Court blacklisted Hamas' armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, declaring it a terrorist organization. The court's ruling was made a day after the terrorist onslaught in the Sinai Peninsula that claimed the lives of 27 Egyptian soldiers and left dozens wounded. There is no clear-cut evidence of collaboration between the Islamic State (IS), which assumed responsibility for the attacks, and cells of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in the recent terrorist assault. But as far as Egypt is concerned, there is no need, or any reason, to ascertain such coordination between the two groups to declare Hamas' armed wing an organization that supports and carries out terrorist attacks.
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades have been active in Sinai for years, smuggling weapons and conspiring with each and every jihadist faction around, mostly under cover, but openly at times, during the era of former President Hosni Mubarak, while his regime occasionally turned a blind eye.
They kept at it both before and after the Muslim Brotherhood's ouster and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's rise to power as president of Egypt. But rather than acknowledging the new situation created and realizing that they are leading the 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza along a hopeless blind alley, Hamas leaders continue to act as if it were a crisis likely to be resolved shortly. This time around, however, the challenge facing Hamas has to do not only with Israel, and Hamas cannot hope to tackle or overcome it in another round of armed conflict and a subsequent cease-fire agreement. Israel will not go away, while Sisi and the new Egyptian regime are there to stay for quite some time.
The reaction by senior Hamas member Ismail Haniyeh aptly illustrates the ostrich policy Hamas is following, as it buries its head in the sand and fails to understand the Egyptian court’s ruling and its immediate and future implications for the movement in general, and for the Gaza Strip residents in particular. “Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades are a source of pride, honor and bravery. You Egyptians have lost much of what’s left of your integrity and sense of justice, which has done away with itself,” Haniyeh lashed out in anger against Egypt — formerly embraced by him as “our great friend.”
