Muslim Brotherhood Refuses To Allow Weapons To Hamas Via Tunnels

A few days ago Issam al-Haddad, a senior Muslim Brotherhood official who serves as Morsi's adviser on foreign affairs, said that Egypt will not permit the flow of weapons via the tunnels, since that will undermine stability in the Sinai Peninsula. The Egyptian court is of the same opinion and it recently ruled that all tunnels on the Gaza border should be destroyed since they threaten Egypt's security.
Brotherhood to Hamas: Wage jihad in other ways, YnetNews, March 7, 2013

Barry Rubin writes: Good News; War Postponed: Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Angry at Hamas, Cuts Off Weapons

Something both positive and revealing has just happened and while it undermines one prediction of mine it reinforces another. I’m delighted to see it.


I predicted that since Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a radical, Islamist group that wants to wipe Israel off the map and the ruling Hamas group in the Gaza Strip is part of the Muslim Brotherhood and is a radical Islamist group and wants to wipe Israel off the map that the Egyptian regime would cooperate with Hamas in fomenting terrorism against Israel and that the Egyptian government would facilitate the flow of arms, money and terrorists to the Gaza Strip for that purpose.

In fact, though, it has now become clear that the Brotherhood regime is stopping weapons and other things from entering the Gaza Strip. (As did its predecessor, the Mubarak regime.)

But why, given my above-explained chain of reasoning is true, is this happening?

The answer lies in another point I’ve made: That many revolutionary Islamists are over-confident (partly in the face of a weak United States; partly due to their ideology that puts the deity, literally, on their side, and partly because of the big gains they are making throughout the region and even the world.

The Muslim Brotherhood of course has no interest in helping Israel, but there are other motivations:

• The Morsi regime Egyptian regime doesn’t want a war -- nor even a high level of conflict -- at this time.
• Hamas has gotten itself entangled with smaller radical Islamist groups that are waging an armed struggle against Egypt, seeking both to overthrow the Egyptian government, and to stage attacks against Israel across the Egypt-Israel border without approval of the Muslim Brotherhood.
• US pressure stemming from the ceasefire agreement in which Egypt promised to shut down the arms’ flow -- for this credit is due the Obama Administration.

According to Rubin, for the time being, based on the tension between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, combined with the situations elsewhere, Israel's security situation for the time being is actually good:

Whatever the balance of reasons, this greatly reduces the threat to Israel from Hamas for the coming months or even years. At the same time, the Syrian civil war and the growing hatred by the rebels against Hizballah, which supports the dictatorship, is also undermining Israel’s main enemy to the north. With Iran still not having nuclear weapons that means Israel’s security situation is in excellent shape.

Read the whole thing.

Of course, the situation can -- and will -- change, as we see regularly in the Middle East.


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