Israel welcomes Egypt's blacklisting of Hamas' military wing

Israeli officials and commentators welcomed a Cairo court ruling designating Hamas’s military wing, the Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, as a terrorist organisation.

Israeli radio yesterday quoted sources at the offices of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon as saying that the decision serves Israel’s strategic interests, which are undermining Hamas’s ability to reinforce its military power and its rule of the Gaza Strip.

The sources noted that the decision will compel Egypt not to allow assistance from any state into Gaza.

In the same context, Israeli commentators stressed that this is the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict that an Arab country had agreed with Israel that Palestinian resistance constitutes a form of terrorism.

In an article published by Haaretz yesterday, the newspaper’s Middle Eastern affairs analyst Zvi Bar’el wrote: “For the first time, an Arab leader is challenging the common view that ‘resistance’ organisations that are fighting Israel necessarily serve Arab interests.”

Bar’el lamented that “the Muslim Brotherhood and its progeny, such as Hamas, have become the ‘usual suspects’ – even when Ansar Beit Almaqdis (‘champions of Jerusalem’), which has shifted its allegiance from Al-Qaeda to Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) claims responsibility for attacks.”

He stressed that the aim behind the court’s decision is to legitimise the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip.

Bar’el did not rule out the possibility that the decision could be linked to the parliamentary elections that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi is planning to hold in Egypt, noting that Al-Sisi wants to utilise the accusations made against Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to make it illegitimate for representatives of the Brotherhood to run as independent candidates in the election.

He added that Egypt can no longer play the role of mediator between Hamas and Israel or Hamas and Fatah.

The Haaretz analyst also noted that although Israel could be satisfied with Al-Sisi’s stance against Hamas, “the Egyptian designation will not solve Israel’s own problems with Hamas. In Israel, apparently more than in Egypt, it is clear that economic pressure on the Gaza Strip, the continued blockade and delays in reconstruction in the territory could reignite the Strip and even lead to another round of violence on top of last summer’s war.”