Hamas is part of the international organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is how this Islamic resistance organisation defines itself in its charter, produced in 1988. A Muslim Brotherhood chapter has existed in Palestine since the 1940s. It was initiated by Egyptian members who had gone there to fight in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Following the establishment of Israel and its occupation of half the area allocated for a Palestinian state under the UN partition resolution of 1947 and, then, increasingly after Israel engulfed the rest of Palestinian territory in its June 1967 invasion, the Muslim Brothers in Palestine pursued a strategy of penetrating society from the bottom up. The idea was to build and control society in accordance with its precepts before contemplating resistance or advocating the idea of liberating the land. The group's literature at the time suggested that it felt it was too weak to mount an effective resistance to liberate Palestine. The Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood did not work or align with the Palestinian resistance organisation that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, it denied all connection with them and the notion of armed resistance, and took advantage of this stance to promote the development of its organisational networks and institutions on the ground. The occupation power took full advantage of this to undermine the resistance factions that had come together under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). It was not difficult to feed the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood's antagonism towards these resistance factions, which it branded as secular. Throughout the period from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 until the outbreak of the great Intifada on 8 December 1987, Muslim Brotherhood members in Palestine did not take part in a single act of armed resistance for fear that this would have given the enemy the excuse to eliminate their group and their project in Palestine. A turning point came with the 1987 Intifada, in which all segments of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza took part. The Muslim Brotherhood leadership came under intense pressure from its younger members and others in the group who felt that their image among the Palestinian people had deteriorated immensely because they were standing on the sidelines. Before long, sharp internal rifts were fracturing the group as the younger members began to act on their desire to take part in the resistance operations alongside PLO factions. To curb this trend, the leadership decided to form a paramilitary wing. Although Hamas was launched two weeks after the outbreak of the Intifada, this did not prevent the Muslim Brotherhood leadership from issuing statements claiming that it had spearheaded the uprising and stood behind it from the outset. It soon became evident that the new movement was more a burden than an aid to the Palestinian cause. Hamas refused to join the unified national leadership that emerged during the Intifada and, instead, continued to work independently without coordinating its activities with other resistance factions. Moreover, sometimes it seemed deliberately bent on sewing confusion and obstructing unified action. For example, it would call for strikes on different days than those set by the unified national leadership and it would instruct its members not to go on strike on the days set by the national leadership. Such tactics wrought considerable attrition on the impetus of the collective resistance drive. Hamas opposed the Madrid Conference that convened in 1991 and rejected the Oslo Accords that eventually emerged from that process in 1993. Palestine was an “Islamic property endowment” not one inch of which should be relinquished, it proclaimed, after which it initiated a wave of bombings in order to sabotage the accord and prevent the implementation of its provisions. In 1996, Hamas boycotted legislative elections on the grounds that they constituted recognition of the legitimacy of the Oslo Accords. A decade later it reversed its stance and participated in the 2006 legislative elections, obtaining a majority of the votes. Afterwards, Hamas seized control of Gaza and stripped it from the West Bank. Then, in July 2008, the Hamas politburo its willingness to accept the two-state solution that it had previously rejected and actively sought to obstruct through dozens of bombings the ultimate effect of which was to induce Israel to reoccupy territory from which it had withdrawn its forces. When confronted with the inconsistency of its stances, the Hamas leadership responded that its new position was only temporary because it did not yet have the power to destroy Israel. Once it did, it would reverse its position again and begin the battle for Israel's destruction. Once secure in its control over Gaza, Hamas turned this strip of land into a platform for the advancement of the Hamas project. It dug tunnels beneath the Gaza-Egyptian border through which it obtains the goods it needs from the outside and dispatches its operatives into Egyptian territory. Evidence indicates that Hamas operatives targeted Egyptian soldiers and there are strong suspicions that they were behind the storming of Egyptian prisons during the 25 January Revolution and the burning of national security buildings. Following President Mohamed Morsi's assumption of office, Egyptian authorities have received an uninterrupted train of visits by Hamas delegations at various levels. In addition, orders were given to facilitate the passage of Hamas elements through Egyptian territory on their way to Iran for military training exercises, or on their way back to Gaza, sometimes carrying with them Iranian funding contributions. Not only did these elements cross into Egypt above ground through the Rafah Crossing, which was opened on a permanent basis and even expanded to permit the passage of trucks. They also availed themselves of the tunnels that proliferated under the supervision of Hamas, which created an entire government department dedicated to the administration of the tunnels, collecting “licensing” fees from tunnel entrepreneurs, and levying customs taxes on the goods and products, stolen cars and subsidised Egyptian gas and petrol that are smuggled into Gaza. In addition to such ordinary tunnels, Hamas also operates special tunnels for the smuggling of arms, explosives and Hamas militiamen into or out of Gaza. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's Guidance Bureau recently held meetings with Hamas leaders at a time when this movement came under the glare of suspicion for possible involvement in the murder of 16 Egyptian officers and soldiers in Sinai last August. Hamas has also been accused of using Sinai as a base for terrorist operations and of readying hundreds of trained soldiers to be put at the disposal of the Muslim Brotherhood and to fight in defence of the Brotherhood's representative in the presidential palace in the event of a popular uprising against Morsi. Some suspect that Hamas has conspired to plant operatives dressed as Egyptian soldiers in various hotspots with instructions to shoot some people, thereby incurring public censure against and marring the image of the Armed Forces at a time when more and more Egyptians are looking to the Egyptian army as the sole remaining bulwark of the Egyptian state and the only power capable of stemming the current deterioration and restoring security in the event of a breakdown. In spite of all these accusations and suspicions, the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Bureau welcomed Hamas leaders and strategists for talks on issues of direct bearing to Egyptian national security and the safety of the Egyptian people. Naturally, no one outside the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas elites has been made privy to the substance of those talks the Egyptian party to which still has no legal status while its premises are guarded by the Egyptian police who are prepared to lash out against Egyptians determined to protest the Guidance Bureau's secretive and illegitimate dealings in matters pertaining Egyptian national security and wellbeing. When protesters went to the MB headquarters to deliver their message, they were greeted by a double assault by Central Security Forces and Muslim Brotherhood militias that attacked with violence more systematic and brutal than their attacks against protesters during the demonstrations in front of the presidential palace several months ago. The Guidance Bureau is very clear in its priorities. It cares about Egyptian national security and the welfare of the Egyptian people only insofar as these serve the Muslim Brotherhood's international project in which Egypt is a base. Former Muslim Brotherhood supreme guide Mahdi Akef famously expressed his disdain for the Egyptian state and society when he said that it would make no difference to him if a Malaysian was president of Egypt. He summed up the Muslim Brotherhood attitude perfectly: the Egyptian state, national security and society are there to serve and promote the Muslim Brotherhood's grand design. As Hamas is a link in this design, serving Hamas takes priority over national security if doing so advances the Muslim Brotherhood global project, which does not recognise the concept of the state, the value of national affiliation or the principle of citizenship. It is a project that clashes with the very essence of national security.
The writer is an analyst at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. He is also head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and a former MP.
