Arab leaders tacitly back crackdown on Brotherhood: analysts
By Sammy Ketz (AFP) – 14 hours ago
BEIRUT — Most Arab leaders tacitly support Egypt's deadly crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, fearing the group's growing regional influence since the Arab Spring threatens their own power, analysts say.
Egypt's army, directly or indirectly in power since 1952, ousted the Brotherhood's democratically elected Mohamed Morsi as president in a July 3 coup and installed an interim civilian government in its place.
Morsi's supporters set up protest camps in Cairo and promised to stay put until the former leader, now in custody, was reinstated. The government ordered them to disperse and, after a number of delays, police backed by troops stormed the camps on Wednesday.
The death toll from ensuing clashes, in the capital and across Egypt, has reached nearly 600 people.
But only Qatar, a Brotherhood patron, and Tunisia, whose ruling Ennahda party is affiliated with the movement, strongly condemned the assault.
"All the Gulf monarchies, except for Qatar, and Jordan fear that the Muslim Brotherhood revolution will be exported to them," said Khattar Abou Diab, a professor at University of Paris-Sud.
"For that reason, they are hoping for a return to the classic situation of a strong power in Egypt, a pivotal country in the Arab world."
These countries, Saudi Arabia in particular, "have noted with disapproval the growing weight of Turkey and Iran... and their support for the Egyptian regime demonstrates their desire to return to a purely Arab regional system based on more classical lines."
Turkey, whose Islamist government is ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, has widened its influence in the Arab world since the outbreak of the Arab Spring.
And Iran has reinforced its links with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and established relations with the Brotherhood in Egypt.
Shadi Hamid, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Doha Centre, said what happened in Egypt "is a product of a big regional issue, which is this kind of 'Arab Cold War', and it is clear what side... is winning."
For Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, the coup delivered a "blow to their major regional opponent, the Muslim Brotherhood, so it would not make much sense for them to turn around now and say "well, we don't like what you are doing anymore.'
"Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now the primary patrons of this new military government and they are very supportive. It is unlikely they would offer much criticism."
For 30 years, Saudi Arabia and the Brotherhood maintained good relations, but these deteriorated after the Brotherhood criticised Riyadh for accepting US military personnel in the country during the 1991 Gulf War.
Things got worse after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
At the time, Riyadh accused the Brotherhood of being at the root of jihadist ideology, and the interior minister declared in 2002 that "all extremist groups are derived from the Muslim Brotherhood."
But the worst of all for Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, was the rapprochement between the Brotherhood and Shiite Iran across the Gulf, Riyadh's main rival in the Middle East.
On Friday, Saudi King Abdullah openly spoke backed the Egyptian regime, saying it was engaged in a fight against "terrorism."
Saudi Arabia "has stood and stands with its Egyptian brothers against terrorism, deviance and sedition, and against those who try to interfere in Egypt's internal affairs... and its legitimate rights in deterring those tampering with and misleading" its people, he said.
"Those who have interfered in its affairs must know that they are causing sedition and backing terrorism, which they claim to fight," added the head of oil-rich conservative kingdom that is a major regional player.
Stephane Lacroix, a professor at the Institute of Political Science in Paris and an expert on the group, said the "Muslim Brotherhood has never been opposed to relations with Shiite Iran while, for the Saudis, that is a red line not only in terms of Sunni orthodoxy but also because or regional politics."
Lacroix added: "For the Emiratis and Saudis, the Muslim Brotherhood has regional ambitions that could be a danger to the monarchies of the Gulf.
"These monarchies consider it to be in their interest to have rather more dictatorships than democratic regimes, which are unstable and unpredictable in their eyes."
As Abou Diab puts it, the "democratic option in the Arab world has been more or less brought to a halt. What happened in Egypt could give ideas to others in Libya and Tunisia (two fledgling democracies where Islamists are on the rise) and what happened in Egypt could spread to them."
Persian Gulf power play: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood
Yuram Abdullah Weiler
On Line: 11 August 2013 16:36 In Print: Monday 12 August 2013
“Qatar’s strategy of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood and putting itself at the cutting edge of change elsewhere in the region as well as its soft diplomacy contain risks that Saudi Arabia is likely to exploit.” James M. Dorsey, Senior Fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
The Persian Gulf petro-powers Saudi Arabia and Qatar are engaged in a struggle for ideological and geopolitical supremacy in the Sunni Islamic world. Both nations have been actively involved in the so-called Arab Spring revolutionary movements that have erupted throughout the Middle East since the spring of 2011, but differ in their sociopolitical views of how to manage the inevitable transition that is taking place in the region while maintaining the status quo within their respective monarchies. High on the list of differences between the two countries are their diametrically opposed views on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Combining elements of Sufi spirituality, Salafi dogma and political reform, the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Ikhwan as it is known, was founded in Egypt in 1928 by primary school teacher Hassan al-Bana, but the movement soon spread to Palestine, Sudan, Iraq, Syria and beyond.
By 1939, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose goal was to eliminate foreign intrusions and establish an Islamic state, had become one of Egypt’s largest and most influential organizations. Seen as a threat, the Ikhwan was banned by the Egyptian government in 1948 and leader al-Bana was assassinated in Cairo on February 12, 1949.
Despite initially supporting the July 1952 coup by the Free Officers’ Movement ousting the British-supported monarch King Faruq, the Muslim Brotherhood was banned again by January 1954 after being accused of an assassination attempt on Jamal 'Abd al-Nasir.
Subsequently, al-Nasir persecuted the Ikhwan, causing thousands of members to flee to the Persian Gulf states, among them Saudi Arabia. Middle East Scholar Alain Gresh explains that Saudi alarm resulted from "the establishment of the Brotherhood in the Gulf states and its involvement in protests that have affected the kingdom since the first Gulf war.” Continuing, Gresh adds, “Their political vision - an Islamic state, but a democratically elected one - diverges from that of Saudi Arabia, which is founded on unquestioning loyalty to the royal family.”
Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen, and Turkey all supported Iraqi dictator Saddam during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, whereas Saudi Arabia sided with the West and George H.W. Bush’s coalition. Saudi Arabia also opposed the Muslim Brotherhood in efforts to topple former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Clarifying the diverging views on the Muslim Brotherhood, Woodrow Wilson Center Senior Scholar David Ottaway writes, “In the past, the Saudis blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for politicizing the Saudi brand of Islam known as Wahhabism and turning Wahhabis into political activists. This led Osama bin Laden (a Saudi national) and Al-Qaeda to promote extremism, including a call to overthrow the House of Saud. So that background is a very important factor in the strains between the Saudi rulers and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.”
Historical relations between the two kingdoms have been mostly cool except for a period of detente from 2007 to 2011. While there is a dispute between the two brewing over oil in Yemen, at the root of the political sparing are differing perspectives on maintaining the respective monarchies: Qatar is open to supporting “democratic” political Islamic movements, while the Saudis move quickly to suppress any political opposition.
Dorsey explains, “At the core of the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar are fundamentally different strategies of self-preservation. While the royal families of both have sought to buffer themselves by lavish social spending, Saudi Arabia has opted for maintenance of the status quo where possible and limited engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, toward which it harbors deep-seated distrust.”
Qatar, which has thrown its full support behind the Muslim Brotherhood, also funds the popular Al-Jazeera media network that Gresh refers to as “the mouthpiece of the Brotherhood, in Egypt and, to a lesser extent, in Tunisia.”
Qatar is the leading arms supplier to insurgents Syria, with 85 plane loads of weapons flown - apparently under CIA auspices and with Turkish oversight - from Doha to Ankara and from there, trucked into Syria and distributed among rebel factions.Saudi Arabia is a distant second with only 37 planeloads and Zagreb, Croatia a close third with 36military cargo flights as of March 2013.
The reason for this vociferous assault, according to Dr. Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince, is that “Syria is seen as the main obstacle to unifying the region’s states against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.” And while Saudi Arabia and Qatar share the goal of toppling the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, they disagree on the nature of the successor regime, as Dr. Masood Assadollahi explains, “The Qataris support the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and demand that the Muslim Brotherhood come to power following the downfall of the government in Syria. But due to its old enmity with the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia does not pursue such a development.”
Clearly, the stated position of the Ikhwan also puts it on a collision course with the United States, which has as one of its main security interests in the region the protection of the Zionist regime. Dr. Mohamed El-Sayed Habib, First Deputy of the Chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, stated, “The Zionist entity has usurped the land of Palestine, the land of Arabs and Muslims. No proud people can accept to stay put when their land is occupied and their sacred places are assaulted. Resisting occupation is required by Islam and sanctioned by international law, agreements and customs. ... As to the reported statement describing the holocaust as a myth, it was not intended as a denial of the event but only a rejection of exaggerations put forward by Jews.”
In its zeal to “contain” the influence of Iran, the US made a strategic shift to support Sunni extremist organizations in 2007, at a time when things were looking poorly for the Bush Junior administration in Iraq. Journalist Seymour Hersh quotes Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Vali Nasr as stating, “It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger-Iran or Sunni radicals,” and apparently, the faction claiming Iran to be the greater threat won the day. The Muslim Brotherhood enters the equation even on the side of Saudi Arabia since, according to Nasr, “The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis.”
So it would seem that the Saudi monarchy, by funding the Brotherhood, is really working against its own best interests, however Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi offers an explanation of this seemingly contradictory behavior, suggesting, “Saudi’s financial assistance could be read as an attempt to keep relations relatively warm and not allow this most important of Arab states [Egypt] to drift into an Iranian orbit.”
Despite efforts by disposed President Mohammad Morsi to cultivate warmer relations with Saudi Arabia, the Ikhwan became a fault line that apparently was impossible to mend.While the Qataris strongly supported the Morsi administration, the Saudis opposed it and spent huge amounts of money to topple itout of fears that a popular democratic revolution might spread to the kingdom, as Ottaway points out, “Saudi Arabia is run by the most conservative Islamic sect among the [ultra-conservative] Salafi groups in the Arab world; the Saudis do not have sympathy for any form of democracy.”
Gresh quotes former Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef as saying, “The Muslim Brotherhood isthe cause of most of the Arab world’s problems and has done vast amounts of damage in Saudi Arabia” And judging by the record crowds that pouredonto the streets of Cairo demanding Morsi’s removal, the overwhelming majorityof Egyptians seem to have agreed with Prince Nayef.
The army under the command of General Abdul Fattah al-Sissi had little choice but to act, as Drs. Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince write, “No doubt, the Egyptian military, a cynical player, found it convenient for the moment to side with ‘the people,’ understanding that it would be far worse to repress 32 million protestors than to remove Morsi from power and face down the Brotherhood.”
In any event, shortly after Morsi’s ouster, the damage control division of the Brotherhood appears to have held a meeting in Ankara to plan their next move, which appears to be to renew their efforts on Tunisia, where the al-Nahda Party and its head, Mr. Rachid al-Ghannouchi, have close ties with Qatar. Al-Ghannouchi condemned Morsi’s ouster, calling upon citizens to demand the return of “legitimacy to President Mohamed Morsi, who was freely-elected by the Egyptian nation.”
Despite their disagreements however, both nations question Washington’s ability to come to their aid as a defender should the need arise, especially in consideration of the current U.S. economic crisis and budget cuts. For this reason, Qatar has focused on soft diplomacy, and its support of the popular Muslim Brotherhood induced rebellions is part of that strategy. In contrast, Saudi Arabia continues its efforts to preserve the status quo by brutally suppressing any signs of revolt while keeping its relations with the Muslim Brotherhood at arm’s length.
So who will emerge the victor in this regal rivalry? As the world's largest liquefied natural gas exporter, partner with Iran in the massive offshore South Pars natural gas field, and a member with Iran and Russia of the so-called “gas troika” that holds some 60 percent of the world’s known gas reserves, Qatar appears well placed as an energy leader. Geopolitically however, the reactionary rulers of Saudi Arabia are ahead due to U.S. backing in Egypt and Syria, yet Qatar with its more pragmatic foreign policy approach may ultimately prevail.
SPARK -- ah, but there are all the profits, and types of profit (not just monetary), for the prophets/dictators and their followers, for all the various sorts of religious/ideological fundamentalists/absolutists who drive and feed on all of that -- and then all the particulars and gradations in the given condition/context in any given situation, where the mindsets, why and how folks do what they do, become comprehensible, even crystal clear, if not sensible -- history littered with seemingly endless variations on that self-fulfilling theme -- . . .
.. i was looking to more understand the Saudi opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood .. shrug .. :) .. it's trying .. the effort of making sense of it all ..
Marx’s Lesson for the Muslim Brothers By SHERI BERMAN Published: August 10, 2013
KARL MARX wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. He had in mind the Revolution of 1848, when a democratic uprising against the French monarchy collapsed into a Bonapartist dictatorship just as the French Revolution had six decades earlier.
Lincoln Agnew
In 1848, workers joined with liberals in a democratic revolt to overthrow the French monarchy. However, almost as soon as the old order collapsed, the opposition fell apart, as liberals grew increasingly alarmed by what they saw as “radical” working class demands. Conservatives were able to co-opt fearful liberals and reinstall new forms of dictatorship.
Those same patterns are playing out in Egypt today — with liberals and authoritarians playing themselves, and Islamists playing the role of socialists. Once again, an inexperienced and impatient mass movement has overreached after gaining power. Once again, liberals have been frightened by the changes their former partners want to enact and have come crawling back to the old regime for protection. And as in 1848, authoritarians have been happy to take back the reins of power.
If Egypt’s army continues its crackdown and liberals continue to support it, they will be playing right into the hands of Marx’s contemporary successors. “Islamists of the world, unite!” they might say; “you have nothing to lose but your chains.” And, unfortunately, they will be right.
It should come as no surprise that Egyptian liberals would implore the military to begin a coup to end the country’s first experiment with democracy just two years after they joined hands with Islamists to oust an authoritarian regime. In the early stages of a country’s political development, liberals and democrats often don’t agree on anything other than the desirability of getting rid of the ancien régime.
Establishing a stable democracy is a two-stage process. First you get rid of the old regime, then you build a durable democratic replacement. Because the first stage is dramatic, many people think the game is over when the dictator has gone. But the second stage is more difficult. There are many examples of broad coalitions coming together to oust dictators but relatively few of them stayed together and agreed on what the new regime should look like. Opposition movements tend to lose steam, falling prey to internal squabbles and the resurgent forces of the old regime.
The year 1848, the original “springtime of the peoples,” was the first time that an organized workers’ movement had appeared on the political scene, and its demands frightened liberals. The middle class wanted economic liberalization; many workers demanded more radical economic and social change. Liberals favored a limited opening of the political system, while workers’ groups wanted full democratization and the power that came with it. When it became clear that workers and socialists might win, liberals balked, and many of them turned back to the conservatives, seeing the restoration of authoritarianism as the lesser of two evils.
This is almost exactly what is playing out in Egypt now. Years of authoritarian rule meant that political and social institutions allowing the peaceful articulation of popular dissent were systematically suppressed. And the state deliberately deepened social divisions. So when democratization came, long-dormant distrust and animosity exploded in extremist rhetoric, mass protests and violence. These things always frighten liberals, who favor order and moderation and dislike radical social experiments. This was true in Europe in 1789 and 1848, and it’s true of Egyptian liberals today.
The problem is how liberals react to such fears. During the late 20th-century transitions to democracy in Southern and Eastern Europe, extremism and religion weren’t major factors. Different groups were thus able to agree on the rules of the game. Also, it was not the first try at democracy in most European countries, and the European Union was there to help. But in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world, the threat of extremism terrifies liberals, and thanks to years of authoritarianism, there isn’t a culture of compromise, nor is there a strong democratic neighbor to guide them.
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The 1848 fiasco strengthened the radical elements of the socialist movement at the expense of the moderates and created a poisonous and enduring rift between liberals and workers. After liberals abandoned democracy, moderate socialists looked like suckers and radicals advocating a nondemocratic strategy grew stronger. In 1850, Marx and Engels reminded the London Communist League that they had predicted that a party representing the German liberal bourgeoisie “would soon come to power and would immediately turn its newly won power against the workers. You have seen how this forecast came true.” They went on to warn, “To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized.” This is not the lesson anybody wants Islamists to learn now.
The mistake that liberals made in 19th-century Europe was to see all socialists as fanatics. But while some socialists were extremists, others were opposed to violence and dedicated to democracy. Those socialists — who later became Europe’s social democrats rather than communists — wanted social and economic reforms, but not ones that were mortal threats to capitalism or democracy. Yet, for too long, European liberals were unwilling to recognize those differences; they opposed full democratization and worked actively to repress the entire movement. The results were disastrous.
Radical, violent and nondemocratic elements within the socialist movement began to ask why workers should participate in a system unwilling to accept the possibility of their victory. And when socialists became the largest political force across Europe, liberals accepted unsavory bargains with conservatives to keep the Left out of power. As a result, European societies became increasingly divided and conflict ridden.
Egypt’s liberals are repeating those mistakes today. Once again, they see their opponents as zealots determined to abolish everything liberals value. But just as not all socialists were proto-Stalinists, not all Islamists want to implement a theocratic regime. There are moderate Islamists today who are willing to play by the rules of the game, and they should be encouraged to do so.
Islamism is still the largest and best-organized popular political force in Egypt, and it is vital that the Egyptian Army and its liberal allies let Islamists know there is a place for them in the region’s democratic future. If all Islamists are demonized, the divisions within Egyptian society will grow, the moderate Islamists will become marginalized, and Egypt’s political future will be troubled.
A century after 1848, social democrats, liberals and even moderate conservatives finally came together to create robust democracies across Western Europe — an outcome that could and should have happened earlier and with less violence. Middle Eastern liberals must learn from Europe’s turbulent history instead of blindly repeating it.
A professor .. https://barnard.edu/profiles/sheri-berman .. of political science at Barnard College and the author of “The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century.”
Deadly Blasts in Lebanon Raise Fears of Sectarian Conflict
Video [embedded] Car Bombs Kill Dozens in Lebanon: Two deadly explosions killed dozens and wounded hundreds in the largely Sunni Muslim city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon.
By HWAIDA SAAD and BEN HUBBARD Published: August 23, 2013
TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Car bombs exploded with catastrophic force outside two Sunni mosques in this northern Lebanon city on Friday as many worshipers were leaving prayers, killing dozens of people and wounding hundreds. The bombings were a major escalation of sectarian violence in Lebanon, a country deeply unsettled by the conflict in neighboring Syria, and reinforced fears that the Middle East could be plunging into unbridled Sunni vs. Shiite warfare.
President Michel Suleiman cut short a visit abroad to meet with security officials on the double blast and exhorted them to “deploy their efforts to reveal the perpetrators and the instigators.” Lebanon’s prime minister-designate, Tammam Salam, said in a statement that “the Tripoli crime is an additional indicator that the situation in Lebanon has reached a very dangerous level.”
Witnesses and Lebanese media said the double blast hit the Taqwa and Al-Salam mosques, which are on opposite sides of the city, at around 1:38 p.m. Tripoli’s mayor, Nader Ghazal, was quoted by Lebanese news media as saying at least 50 people were killed. The Lebanese Red Cross said more than 500 were wounded.
The bombings easily eclipsed the death toll and destruction from a bombing a week earlier in southern Beirut that had targeted Hezbollah, the Shiite militant organization that has aligned with Syria’s government against a Sunni-led insurgency, which has contributed to an increasing polarization in Lebanon.
With deadly sectarian violence now regularly convulsing Iraq as well, a broad area of the region stretching from the Mediterranean east to Baghdad and beyond has become a battleground between Sunnis and Shiites, the major Islamic sects. Political historians said the Tripoli bombings would not go unanswered.
“This was an upping of the ante,” said Mona Yacoubian [ http://www.stimson.org/experts/mona-yacoubian/ ], the senior Middle East adviser at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. “I think we’re seeing the contours of this arena forming in front of our eyes.”
The first car bomb hit about 50 yards from the gates of the Taqwa mosque, setting dozens of cars and a nearby building on fire and shattering the windows of surrounding buildings. The blast snapped the trunks of palm trees and left a crater in the street that punctured a water main, flooding the street. On the roof of the mosque’s entryways sat the carcass of blown-up car that people nearby at the time said was the bomb car, hurtled into the air by the blast.
The second blast near the Al-Salam mosque blasted a six-foot-deep hole in the asphalt and shattered the windows of apartment towers down the block.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blasts, but the Taqwa mosque was where Sheik Salem al-Rafei, an outspoken Sunni preacher, had inveighed against Hezbollah and had exhorted worshipers to support the Sunni insurgency trying to topple Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
Many Taqwa worshipers said they believed their mosque had been targeted because of Sheik Rafei. A large banner hung on the mosque’s fence bore photographs of three men killed in the battle for the border city of Qusayr, Syria, nearly three months ago, in which Hezbollah fighters joined the Syrian Army to defeat Sunni insurgents ensconced there in what is widely viewed as a turning point in the Syria conflict. Text next to their faces said they had been “martyred defending the dignity and pride of the nation.”
Sheik Rafei was not hurt in the bombing, worshipers said, but efforts to contact him were not immediately successful.
One Taqwa worshiper, Saad al-Din Turkomani, 27, said he was inside the mosque listening to Skeik Rafei preach when the explosion blew out the windows and filled the hall with smoke. He said he saw the bombings as a response to last week’s bombing in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut.
“It was a response to our sheik,” he said. “One from our side went to them, so they sent two of theirs to us. They are making us pay the price.”
Like most people in Tripoli, he expected more sectarian violence. “We are entering a hard stage,” he said. “Things are lighting up between the Sunni and the Shia.”
Denying responsibility, Hezbollah condemned the bombings. “These two terrorist explosions come as a translation of the criminal plot that seeks to sow the seeds of discord among the Lebanese and drag the country to internal strife under the headline of sectarianism and religious differences,” the group said in a statement. Accusing unnamed foreign forces of backing the attacks, it said such mayhem benefited “the evil regional international plan that wants to break up our region and drown it in oceans of blood and fire.”
Video of the scenes broadcast just minutes after the attacks showed thick smoke billowing across Tripoli, a Mediterranean port city. One video clip [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY2yN0DtUGg (next below, as embedded)] posted on YouTube showed angry crowds converged outside the smoking Taqwa mosque.
Video by Fares Syria
A second video clip [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqqPe2fVQTo (next below, as embedded)], apparently from a security camera inside the Al-Salam mosque, showed the precise moment of an enormous blast as worshipers were still praying.
Video by lbcgroup
Since the uprising started in Syria more than two years ago, fighting in Lebanon has flared sporadically, with Tripoli a tinderbox [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/world/middleeast/in-tripoli-lebanon-a-deadly-battle-over-syrian-conflict.html ] because of sectarian tensions similar to those across the border. The recurring street fights pit Sunni Muslims, who support the Syrian uprising, against members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which Mr. Assad belongs.
Hwaida Saad and Ben Hubbard reported from Tripoli, Lebanon, Reporting was contributed by David Jolly from Paris, and Christine Hauser and Rick Gladstone from New York.
Mahmoud al-Zahar, center, is a senior Hamas leader.
By JODI RUDOREN Published: August 23, 2013 2 Comments
GAZA CITY — The tumult roiling the Arab world had already severed the lifeline between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and two of its most important patrons, Iran and Syria.
Palestinians waiting to cross into Egypt at the Rafah crossing point. It has been closed for days, stranding thousands of people.
Now, the dismantling of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood by the new military-backed government that ousted the Islamist president has Hamas reeling without crucial economic and diplomatic support. Over the past two weeks, a “crisis cell” of ministers has met daily. With Gaza’s economy facing a $250 million shortfall since Egypt shut down hundreds of smuggling tunnels, the Hamas government has begun to ration some resources.
Its leaders have even mulled publicly what for years would have been unthinkable — inviting the presidential guard loyal to rival Fatah back to help keep the border with Egypt open. (They quickly recanted.)
The mounting pressure on Hamas has implications beyond the 141 square miles of this coastal strip that it has ruled since 2007. It could serve to strengthen President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his more moderate Fatah faction that dominates the West Bank just as Washington-orchestrated peace talks get under way. It also adds another volatile element to the rapidly changing landscape across the region, where sectarian tensions have led to bloodshed and the Islamists’ rise to power through the ballot box has been blocked.
“Now, Hamas is an orphan,” said Akram Atallah, a political analyst and columnist, referring to the fact that the movement sprang from Egypt’s Brotherhood a quarter century ago. “Hamas was dreaming and going up with its dreams that the Islamists were going to take over in all the capitals. Those dreams have been dashed.”
The tide of the Arab Spring initially buoyed Hamas, helping bolster Iran and Syria, which provided the Gazan leadership weapons and cash, while undermining President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who was deeply distrustful and hostile to the group. But Hamas eventually sided with the Sunni opposition in the civil war in Syria — alienating President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian backers. That was offset when Mr. Mubarak was replaced by Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader and ideological ally who relaxed the borders and brokered talks between Hamas and the hostile West as well as its Palestinian rivals.
With Egypt’s military crackdown, Mr. Morsi in detention and the Brotherhood leadership either locked up, dead or in hiding, smuggling between Gaza and Egypt has come to a virtual halt. That means no access to building materials, fuel that costs less than half as much as that imported from Israel, and many other cheap commodities Gazans had come to rely on.
Egypt kept the Rafah crossing point closed for days — stranding thousands of students, business people, medical patients, foreigners and Gazans who live abroad. Adding to Hamas’s isolation, the new emir of Qatar, another benefactor, is said to be far less a fan than his father and predecessor.
In interviews here this week, as well as in public speeches, several Hamas leaders insisted that the Egypt crisis makes repairing the Palestinian rift more urgent. Instead, it already appears more elusive, with the loss of Cairo as the host and broker for reconciliation talks.
Seizing on its opponent’s weakness, the Fatah Revolutionary Council plans to consider declaring Gaza a “rebel province” at a leadership meeting Sunday with President Abbas, which would tighten the noose by curtailing Palestinian Authority financing of operations in the strip. Officials in Fatah and Hamas said that both have increased arrests of the other’s operatives in recent weeks. The Hamas leaders here blame Fatah for what they call a “vicious campaign” against them in the Egyptian news media.
“You can feel the heat because of what’s happening in Egypt,” said Ahmed Yousef, a former aide to Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister of Gaza, who now runs a Gaza research group called House of Wisdom .. http://www.howgaza.org/english/house-of-wisdom.html . “The tense relations between Gaza and Ramallah has been intensified. Everybody is suspicious.”
In separate interviews this week, three senior Hamas leaders — Ziad el-Zaza, the finance minister and deputy prime minister; Ghazi Hamad, who handles foreign affairs; and Mahmoud al-Zahar, a hard-liner — said they were taking a “wait and see” approach to Egypt, hoping that perhaps the tide could turn their way. They imagined that a public backlash against what they called a coup could yet lead to the Brotherhood’s resurgence.
“Our policy right now is to keep the people quiet,” Mr. Zahar said. “We have to keep our people highly immunized against the extreme attitude.”
Mr. el-Zaza, the finance minister, declined to say what spending was being cut beyond the use of government cars and expense accounts. All three said Hamas had been through worse: Israeli bombings and assassinations, exiles from Arab capitals, months-long closures of the Rafah crossing during Mr. Mubarak’s reign. “The region is in labor,” Mr. Hamad said. “It’s a time of difficulty, time of challenges.”
The opposition here has been emboldened by the events across the border. A new youth movement called Tamarod — Arabic for rebellion — after an Egyptian group that helped bring down Mr. Morsi, released a YouTube video urging the overthrow of Hamas and a Facebook page calling for mass demonstrations on Nov. 11. An engineering student who is among the group’s founders and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals said that Hamas had detained at least 50 of Tamarod’s Facebook fans this week, and that he and several others had been jailed, placed under house arrest and had their mobile phones and computers seized. “Maybe Hamas leaders are afraid of what happened in Egypt,” he said.
Several experts said toppling Hamas would be tough. Unlike the Brotherhood, Hamas controls the security forces and service institutions in Gaza as well as its politics. And so far, the rhythm of life appeared to carry on.
Qatar-financed workers were widening the main north-south road this week. Kiosks were crammed with cartoon-character backpacks ahead of school opening on Sunday. The Ferris wheel at a Hamas-run amusement park continued to turn. But at the Rafah crossing, hundreds of desperate would-be travelers waited in vain for days. The gleaming, air-conditioned terminal opened last year was empty but for a handful of Hamas workers watching Al-Jazeera, its baggage carousel idle, a sign flashing “Welcome to Gaza” to nobody.
Egypt announced Friday that it would reopen the border on a limited basis Saturday, after not allowing anyone to leave since Aug. 15, after the government’s deadly raids on two Islamist protest camps.
While Gazans have suffered from intermittent Rafah closures for years, this time many dismissed the ostensible security rationale and saw it as collective political punishment.
“The governments are fighting, and we pay the price,” said Ahmed Muqat, 20, who was trying to get back to medical school in Turkey. “Things are going from worse to worse.”
Dalia Radi, 22, got married Aug. 15, but instead of a honeymoon, spent the week sitting on plastic chairs in a parking lot outside the crossing. For Ms. Radi, whose new husband has lived in Norway for six years, it would have been her first time leaving Gaza.
For Mayy Jawadeh, a 21-year-old student at the University of Tunisia, it may be the last.
“I will never come back again to Gaza,” Ms. Jawadeh said. “Here, no rights for humans — no electricity, no water, you can’t travel. Hamas interferes in Egypt and we bear the brunt.”
Fares Akram contributed reporting from the Gaza Strip, and Said Ghazali from the West Bank.
A version of this article appears in print on August 24, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Pressure Rises on Hamas As Patrons’ Support Fades.
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