Cairo has had enough!! Hamas, the so-called Islamic Resistance Movement, encircled by Israel in Gaza, has crossed more than one red line in regard to Egyptian national security. From smuggling of weapons and jihadists into Sinai through illegally-dug tunnels, to consorting with the Muslim Brotherhood which has recently been declared a terror organization by Cairo. From espousing Al-Qaeda affiliates like Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis (Friends of Jerusalem), to becoming hostage to Qatar's manipulation through petro-dollars. From declaring repeatedly non-recognition of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, to declaring the overthrow of Morsi in July 2013 a military coup.
With such accumulated grievances, made even more grievous by a series of hit and run terrorist attacks on Egyptian security personnel and army officers and soldiers, Egypt at long last has banned Hamas and frozen its assets in Egypt. This is a prelude to the tightening of the movement of persons, goods and services between Egypt and Gaza. Now the only available land connection between Hamas and any Arab territory has been sealed. The dark fantasy of Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, now has to face on a daily basis the bright reality called Egypt.
From 1949 to 1967, Egypt has administered Gaza, but for good measure, has refrained from annexing it. Cairo has done that out of its hope that one day, a State of Palestine would rise up on territories allocated by the UN partition resolution of 1947. That hope, which has been repeatedly dashed by extremism on the two sides of the green line, has cost Egypt lots of blood and treasure. The Egyptian/Israeli war was the longest war in the annals of the Egyptian military -a 30 years war from 1947-1977.
That 30 year long war was bought to a sudden end by a great visionary -the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In 1977, he journeyed to the Kennest, sued for peace, concluded with Prime Minister Begin the Camp David Agreements of 1978, and finally signed the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty in Washington, D.C., in March 1979, with former President Jimmy Carter smiling broadly. For that act of unbelievable courage, both Sadat and Begin received the Nobel Prize for Peace, and Cairo, once again, became a tourist Mecca for thousands of Israeli tourists. But the price of that historic peace, which is still in place, was high. Sadat was assassinated in his own capital on October 6, 1981, at the hands of so-called Islamists.
The first Arab reaction to the Sadat assassination came from the PLO in a short unbelievably cruel statement: "May God Bless the hand which pulled the trigger!!" Arafat was in charge, and he bore the responsibility for that betrayal. It should be here noted that "betrayal" has been a modus operandi for the Arafat regime: In 1970, the PLO tried but failed to replace the benign Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; in 1981, the first advocates for isolating Egypt for having entered into a peace treaty with Israel, were the Arafat conclave; in 1983, the PLO tried but failed to subvert Lebanon through reneging on the Cairo Agreement of 1969 concluded by Nasser between PLO and Lebanon; in 1990, Arafat flew to Baghdad to hug Saddam Hussein for having invaded the State of Kuwait, thus precipitating an en masse expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Finally, as the corruption within the Palestinian leadership shot up (Forbes magazine has estimated Arafat's net worth upon his death at $5 Billion), Hamas' appeal to Gaza voters in 2006 increased. The notion there, as in Egypt toward the Brotherhood, that the Islamists were "pure" (above corruption). Not so!!
By 2008 Hamas rode rough shed on Fatah/PLO in Gaza, and through a mini-civil war, Hamas, under Haniya became "the Gaza government." Thus, as of 2008, we have two Palestines: One in Ramallah headed by Abbas; the other in Gaza strip, ruled by a rebellious splinterist Hamas. Ramallah sought peace with Israel; Hamas sought war through rocketing Israel. Egypt's Mubarak, with the help of Omar Soliman, the then head of Egypt's State Security, spent years trying to unite the Palestinians, and to stave off Israel's might against Hamas. These were wasted Egyptian diplomatic efforts.
With the Arab Spring, Mubarak and Soliman were gone. The Muslim Brotherhood, having won in 3 successive elections, closed ranks with Hamas, its offshoot; sectarianism, a la Gaza, became the daily formula with the Copts and the Shiites its cannon fodder; and the peace treaty with Israel was targeted by Hamas through attacks on Israel from Sinai. Morsi, in response, tied the hands of Egypt's armed forces which were eager to end Hamas' rampage in Sinai.
Studying the Islamist rule in Egypt under Morsi (June 2012-July 2013), one is surprised at how Egypt began to look as a colony of Hamas, aided and abetted by Qatari financial infusion. Egyptian secular anger at that situation was misread as reactionary pressure against Egypt's Islamist march toward democracy. And the U.S. swallowed the poisonous bait. Then came the Second Egyptian Revolution of June 30, 2013 (shamelessly called a coup by its opponents), to put an end to Islamism in Egypt, especially in Sinai. The Hamas invasion of Egypt through tunnels was halted, causing Hamas to lose $250 million annually.
One can safely say that Egypt's political liberation from the Mubarak autocracy in 2011, was soon followed by Egypt's liberation from a rule by false turbans and deceptive beards in 2013. The dependency of terrorism by Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis and Ansar El-Sharia and other similar lunatic fringes of Al-Qaeda on the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and Qatar came abruptly to a screeching halt. The declaration by Cairo of the Brotherhood to be a terror organization, followed by the banning of Hamas was in effect a declaration of the primacy of security over other considerations. The bright reality called Egypt has won over the dark fantasy of Islamic rule. That fantasy has been made even darker in Gaza. Pity the Palestinian cause which had no leadership dedicated to its cause. That cause has never benefited in terms of leadership from the equivalents of a Ghandi or a Mandela.
As a result it had turned into an endless political game with an eye on empty sloganeering and on continuous search for a "sugar daddy" like Qatar whose ambassadors were kicked out on March 5, from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt.
In a joint statement, those countries accused Qatar of engaging in espionage against them by supporting the Brotherhood and providing a media platform for its allies. That media platform is Al-Jazeera which is now banned in Egypt, having been accused of fabricating news instead of reporting the news.
Commenting on his country's isolation, a former Qatari ambassador to Washington told Al-Jazeera: "The whole issue is really about Sisi. These countries are supporting a coup d'etat...We are not going to support dictators." Compounding Qatar's confusion, the Qatari foreign minister declared that that expulsion had "nothing to do with security or stability." For all intents and purposes, Qatar's petrowealth could not save it from becoming a pariah State.
In a recent diplomatic confrontation between Russia's foreign minister, Lavrov, and Qatar's foreign minister, the former, in exasperation, is said to have told his Qatari counterpart: "Sir!! I cannot find your country on the map!!" But the mouse that keeps on roaring (Qatar), artificially elevated by a mountain of oil money, by Al-Jazeera TV channel, and by a US huge naval base, sees its reality in pursuing impossible causes. Political Islamism and Hamas are such causes. There is nothing in common between the mouse (Qatar), the fiction (Hamas), and the reality of Egypt whose recorded history goes back to 10,000 years!!
On March 7, a great anchor on MSNBC TV Channel, Chris Matthews, recently described Egypt succinctly in a few words: "A real country with a real history!!"
No wonder that Qatar and Hamas are ideologically suited to one another: a roaring mouse and a stealthy scorpion!! While Qatar is busy trying to subvert other Arab regimes through illicit financial subventions, Hamas is busy trying to use these subventions to subvert those regimes including the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
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