Since the verdict issued by the Cairo Court of Urgent Matters banning Hamas activities in Egypt has not been appealed in the time period stipulated the ruling can be regarded as final. According to the court implementation of the verdict is contingent on the outcome of two cases in which Hamas is implicated that are currently before the criminal court. The first regards the storming of the Wadi Natroun Prison during the January 2011 Revolution that led to the escape of inmates, including ousted President Mohamed Morsi and some Hamas operatives. The second is the espionage case involving Morsi and members of the Palestinian Islamist group. Should the Hamas defendants in these cases be found guilty the ban will go into effect as Hamas will have been found guilty of perpetrating criminal acts even though, unlike its mother organisation the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas has not been labelled a terrorist organisation. Analysts read the court ruling's welcome in Egyptian political circles as an indicator of the depth of anger towards Hamas. The group, which once stood as a symbol of resistance against the Israeli occupation, is now widely perceived as a movement that meddles in Egyptian politics and has come to regard the Sinai as its backyard. There is a lengthy list of evidence of Hamas's encroachments against Egyptian national security, not least the smuggling of arms and agents into Gaza and from Gaza into Egypt through the Sinai border tunnels. Some interpret the court's verdict as a pre-emptive measure, with several analysts arguing its political repercussions will be more important that any legal question. Mohamed Gomaa, an expert on Palestinian affairs at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, says the verdict is a “pressure card” that Cairo is playing against the Hamas government in Gaza. It is a warning to that government to return to its senses in its relationship with Egypt. Hamas must desist from all attempts to jeopardise Egyptian national security whether by exporting its operatives to undertake terrorist activities in the Sinai or by furnishing logistic support to elements that are taking advantage of the environment of terrorism there. “It is clear that Hamas's policies are impinging on Egyptian national security. It is conceivable that Egypt might wish to end Hamas rule in Gaza at some point in the future,” says Gomaa. Hamas immediately lashed out against the court ruling which it described as highly politicised. According to Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar it paves the way to the end of the Egyptian role in the Palestinian reconciliation process. Yet the fact is negotiations between Hamas and Fatah effectively ground to a halt in 2010 and never resumed again, not even under Morsi. The verdict calls for a ban on all associations, groups, organisations and institutions connected to Hamas and any establishment that receives financial or other support from it. This portion of the ruling raises the question as to whether Hamas does indeed have assets in Egypt and whether or not any these have been officially declared. It is another target of Hamas criticism. According to Al-Zahar the movement has no activities or headquarters in Egypt. A reliable source told Al-Ahram Weekly: “The movement does have premises in Egypt. Although they may have been frozen since the June Revolution, Hamas operated through them. Recall that the movement held two important electoral processes in Egypt: the elections of their Shura Council and of the Political Bureau. These premises absorbed administratively the transfer of the movement's staff from Damascus following the outbreak of the Syrian revolution. The most important of these premises are two main offices, one located on Ahmed Fakhri Street in Nasr City in northern Cairo and the other in Maadi in southern Cairo. There was an oral agreement with Morsi to open those two offices but no official understanding. A number of lesser known Hamas figures also had premises. Hamas political bureau member Mounir Said operated a permanent office in a building in Nasr City.” The source points out that several Hamas officials own apartments in Egypt, though seldom in their own names. The title holders are mostly Egyptian. “There is considerable evidence that property owned by Hamas leaders in Ismailia and Sharqiya is registered in the names of Egyptians. Then there is the Hamas leader, known as Moussa Abu Marzouq, who built a house in the Fifth District in New Cairo to which he moved from Syria and which was used as a political office where he met with other Hamas officials. The premises are known to Egyptian security agencies.” Sinai political activist Mosaad Abu Fajr and other sources from the peninsula have confirmed in interviews that the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas members founded a number of companies a few of which had other partners, sometimes from Qatar. It has been suggested Qatari involvement in these companies intensified after Doha handed the Hamas government a $4 billion grant for reconstruction before the last Israeli war against Gaza. Among these companies is the Burraq Construction Company which obtains building materials from Egypt and Turkey. According to one informed source there is unconfirmed information to the effect that Hamas officials have investments that they manage with Muslim Brotherhood businessmen and that these activities flourished when Hamas took control over managing traffic through the tunnels connecting Gaza and Egypt. In a statement to the press following the verdict to ban Hamas's activities in Egypt, Minister of Justice Nayer Othman stressed that the ban applied only to the movement's activities and not to Hamas members who reside in, or wish to enter, Egypt. Perhaps this may explain why Marzouq, whose residence permit is due to expire next month, remains in Egypt. A source close to him told the Weekly that Marzouq had not complained of any form of harassment in Egypt, either before or after the verdict. Observers have noted that Marzouq, unlike other Hamas officials in Gaza and elsewhere, has issued no anti-Egyptian statements. Some interpret this as a sign he no longer carries the weight he did in the Hamas political bureau. He was recently assigned the relatively marginal post of media officer. Some Hamas officials describe the court ruling as a “blow” to Egypt's history of defending the Palestinian cause and as evidence of Cairo's “complicity” in the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Such statements have been denounced by Egyptian officials who pointed to Egypt's renewed call for the lifting of the blockade during the most recent Arab foreign ministers' conference. As Adnan Abu Hassana, the UNRWA spokesman in Gaza, points out, Israel, as the occupying power in Palestine, is fully responsibility for conditions in Gaza. Another source noted that Cairo has never sought to hamper Hamas's movements through the border crossings but seeks only to regulate and control them as necessary given the security situation in Sinai. The border crosses have opened for three days every two weeks - a total of 88 days - since military operations were set in motion in the Sinai in July. In spite of the verdict Hamas has sustained its anti-Egyptian positions even as it continues to demand strategic and security facilities at the crossings,” says Tarek Fahmy, head of the Israeli studies unit at the National Centre for Middle East Studies. “Contrary to Hamas claims Egypt, which makes a distinction between the Palestinian people and Hamas rule, has not sought to restrict the flow of essential goods. It allowed two shipments of Qatari gas into Gaza recently. Hamas is pushing the idea of privatising the crossings in order to promote the imposition of de facto realities, a policy Egypt rejects,” “The question of the future of the Hamas regime in Gaza and the possibility of bringing it to an end presses ever more insistently on the nerves and sensory centres of decision-making circles in Egypt,” says Gomaa. “The same applies to the most effective options in this regard. Which would be least costly for Egypt in terms of their political, security and media repercussions?” One of the options currently being debated involves a return to “the old option”, flexible borders that can be tightened when necessary. Some argue that while this scenario was not successful in the past current conditions are favourable to its implementation. Since Egypt's 30 June revolution, says Gomaa, Hamas has shown itself incapable of understanding the grave dilemmas it faces. It has proved unable to resolve conflicts between its various factions and incapable of establishing lines of communications between some of its centres. The movement's horizons are increasingly closing in to the extent that it has been unable to secure suitable headquarters for the head of its political bureau Khaled Mashaal. The group's political alliances are crumbling and its back is increasingly exposed as Arab and regional opinion grows evermore disillusioned with its political and strategic calculations and ventures. Hamas and its administration is reeling under the economic strains caused by the decline in foreign assistance and the loss of revenues caused by the closure of more than 85 per cent of the tunnels. “On top of all this,” adds Gomaa, “Hamas's popular and constitutional legitimacy has been eroded by more than six years of absolute authoritarian rule.” A second option is to go on the offensive or, as Gomaa puts it, “to strike the iron while its hot”. Egypt could work to tighten the noose on Hamas in Gaza in the knowledge this would receive the support of the vast majority of Egyptians and that official and popular opposition elsewhere in the Arab region would be minimal. Large segments of Arab public opinion, says Gomaa, may well approve Egypt's actions given Hamas no longer enjoys the approval or sympathy it once commanded. The logic of this proactive option is that it is not enough to wait and see how developments in Gaza pan out as the result the economic stranglehold. Instead Egypt should participate in shaping events by coordinating with anti-Hamas activists and help in generating a grassroots Palestinian movement aimed at the overthrow of the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is important to note that Egypt began to put the first option into effect during the closing days of the Morsi regime when the Egyptian army stepped up the closure of the Gaza tunnels, an action that was necessary given the way Jihadist salafist groups had begun to proliferate in the Sinai. According to some estimates in the last week of June 2013 Gaza was receiving only 10 per cent of the fuel that had entered the strip at the beginning of the same month. The second step entailed preventing Hamas leaders from leaving Gaza. That Egypt hosted members of the Palestinian Tamarod (Rebel) Movement in January does not provide any solid indication that Egypt has opted for the second option, even if Egyptian officials were on hand to meet the movement's representatives. Indeed, it is doubtful the Palestinian activists can ever return to Gaza without being arrested by Hamas. If Egypt were to pursue the second option it would be ill-advised to rely on activists from Fatah in Gaza. They are already under constant surveillance by the Hamas-controlled security agencies. It should also be stressed that no one has voiced the possibility of Egyptian military invention in Gaza. This is not an option, however limited. The actions of the Egyptian government towards Hamas rule in Gaza indicate that the first option continues to prevail. This does not preclude the possibility of a shift to option two but this remains contingent on a number of factors: Israel's approach to Gaza and the future of the Hamas regime there; the progress of and developments related to the military and security operations being undertaken by the Egyptian army in the Sinai and conditions and developments in the Palestinian sphere, especially concerning the strategies of the PA under President Mahmoud Abbas on the one hand, and on the other the scope and degree of tensions between Hamas and inhabitants of Gaza.
