Hamas in the Crosshairs

"It would be fascinating to learn what is going on in the heads of Hamas leaders who appear to be bending over backwards to insure that they are high on the list of targets of Egypt's new "war on terrorism." On the contrary, their current attitude seems to be "bring it on... It's unfathomable, and because they are directly responsible for the well-being of the people of Gaza, unforgivably irresponsible." Hussein Ibish of ATFP

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/26/hamas-in-the-crosshairs.html

Hamas in the Crosshairs

by Hussein Ibish

Today's BBC headline says it all: "Egypt crisis: Morsi accused of plotting with Hamas." In other words, just when you thought things couldn't get any worse for Hamas, they suddenly did.

Former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has been arrested on a variety of charges, mainly to do with alleged crimes in collusion with Hamas. The accusations include several attacks on various prisons, including a 2011 jailbreak in which Morsi escaped. Morsi is specifically charged with collaborating with Hamas "to carry out anti-state acts, attacking police stations and army officers and storming prisons, setting fire to one prison and enabling inmates to flee, including himself, as well as premeditated killing of officers, soldiers and prisoners." Heady stuff to say the least.

Yesterday in Open Zion, I explained how of the Egyptian military, government and a significant percent of the population sees Hamas as an integral part of a wide-ranging security crisis. This includes the ongoing and intensifying insurgency by "Jihadist" militants in Sinai, which continues to deteriorate. Hamas is widely believed to have an ongoing cooperative relationship with these extremists, to the detriment of Egyptian national security, and some 35 of its fighters are said to have been killed when the Egyptian counteroffensive began two weeks ago.

That the Sinai insurgency exploded with unparalleled fury immediately after the ouster of Morsi fueled heavy suspicions on the part of many in Egypt that the former president was giving the extremists "a free hand" in Sinai and that Hamas was deeply involved in fueling this crisis. The Egyptian authorities are facing a two-front battle involving Muslim Brotherhood supporters and opponents in competing protests and street clashes, as well as the Sinai insurgency.

Alarm has intensified given a bomb attack on Wednesday against the police headquarters in the city of Mansoura, which killed one soldier and injured 28 others. The bottom line concern is that coordinated, armed anti-government violence seems to be spreading from the Sinai periphery into more central parts of Egypt, and that such violence is at least parallel to, or at worst dovetailing with, unrest stoked by angry Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

Reports that Brotherhood officials have assured local elders that attacks in Sinai would stop if Morsi were reinstated as president reinforce the idea that there is an ideological and, indeed, operational connection between the Brotherhood and the Sinai extremists...READ MORE

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