Rift with Egypt forcing Hamas to turn to Iran once again

Haaretz

“Relations between Iran and Hamas have been restored, and we have no problem with Hamas … Our Islamic duty is to support the resistance, and we are therefore supporting the movement,” explained Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani last week in an interview with the Lebanese Al Miadin television network.

At the end of the week there were already reports to the effect that Iran is planning to receive Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, after over two years of almost completely severed relations between the Iranian regime and Hamas, which included a rejection of previous attempts by senior Hamas officials to visit Tehran.

This renewed relationship was probably mediated by Qatar, which has been hosting Meshal since he left Damascus, and after Hamas was outlawed in Egypt, which ordered the closing of the organization’s offices and froze its assets in addition to the prolonged closures on Gaza imposed by the Egyptian army.

Egypt’s policy toward Hamas took a dramatic turn for the worse in the wake of the political battle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military regime that declared the brotherhood a terrorist organization. Although already during the tenure of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi the Egyptian army started to destroy some of the tunnels linking the Gaza Strip and Sinai, thereby arousing the anger of the Muslim Brotherhood regime, after Morsi’s downfall the army’s anti-Hamas activity expanded significantly.

The Egyptian regime accuses the organization of helping the Muslim Brotherhood to escape from the Natron prison at the start of the revolution in Egypt in January 2011, and of participating in the attack in which 19 Egyptian officers were killed in August 2012. The policy of the military regime in Egypt is complementing Israel’s closure on Gaza by allowing the Rafah crossing to open only a few days a month, preventing the transfer of merchandise via the crossing, cutting all ties with Hamas’ leadership and creating a terrorist image for the organization via the Egyptian media.

Egypt’s policy complemented Iran’s diplomatic closure against Hamas. Meshal’s penetrating criticism of the massacre of civilians in Syria and his departure from Damascus for that reason caused the loss of one of the organization’s most important sources of income, when Iran decided to discontinue the annual transfer of tens of millions of dollars to Hamas’ accounts. (According to various estimates the organization received about $23 million a month from Iran). Qatar’s promise of two years ago to transfer $400 million to Hamas for development was also discontinued in the wake of the deterioration in relations between Egypt and Qatar due to Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The result is that this year Hamas is liable to suffer a $699 million deficit. It is already having difficulty paying salaries to about 40,000 employees and funding the maintenance of its security forces, with unemployment in Gaza reaching 43 percent.

Turkey now remains the only source of revenue − the sum total of its assistance to Hamas is unknown. The Hamas leadership that convened about 10 days ago in Beirut to discuss the organization’s financial situation decided by a large majority to try to transfer the organization’s permanent seat to Turkey. But according to Turkish sources, there has still been no such official request from the organization, and even if it is received there is no certainty that Turkey will agree.

Sponsoring Hamas has recently become a bone of contention between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates on the one hand, and Iran and Qatar on the other. The latter two countries are accused by the former of “intervention in the internal affairs of Arab countries,” one reason being their support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its branches, such as Hamas. That means that Qatar’s support or the renewed relations between Iran and Hamas are not necessarily signs of support for Hamas’ ideology, but are part of a far broader diplomatic struggle for influence in the Middle East.

The upshot is that Hamas’ distress is now playing into the hands of Iran and Qatar, which are conducting their battle against their rivals on the backs of about 1.7 million Gazan citizens. But Hamas’ anticipated return to Iran is liable to present a new challenge to Egypt and Israel, with neither of them having leverage to influence the conduct of Hamas in Gaza. Although the Gaza crossings are controlled by the two countries and they have can decide on the extent of the closure, Iran will once again be holding one of the sources of power than can affect the extent of Palestinian Authority control, not to mention the informal agreements between Hamas and Israel.

The necessity of turning to Iran once again is liable to force the Hamas leadership to change its attitude toward Syrian President Bashar Assad, and in doing so to admit its failure to return to be welcomed by the Arab countries, from which it expected a warm reception after adding its voice to those of the Gulf states and Egypt regarding treatment of the Syrian regime. Although Hamas enjoyed a short period of improved relations, particularly with the Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood, it was actually the behavior of the mother movement that caused Hamas to be condemned and to be forced to find its place outside Arab circles.