Egypt is bleeding and struggling
The recent terrorist criminal act that struck Arish, claiming over three hundred innocent children, elderly, and youth, was not the first Islamist terrorist act to hit Egypt and certainly will not be the last. The question is not whether Islamist terrorism will strike again, but when and where?
The incubator of terrorism in Egypt and the Islamic world is very large, and what we have seen so far of brutal terrorist acts is only the visible terrorism… The latent terrorism, which has been planted over centuries in the minds of Muslims, is now emerging in different forms, locations, and with different outputs from one country to another and from one site to another, but the roots of this Islamist terrorism are one; the jurisprudence of the sheikhs of sedition and their long hand in Islamic societies and states.
The strength of this terrorism does not lie in the thousands it has recruited for criminal acts here and there… Its strength lies in the hundreds of millions of silent Muslims on this terrorism, the millions who embrace and sponsor it, and the governments in Islamic countries that have empowered and supported Islamist currents to stand against nationalist and patriotic currents for decades… Now these regimes are paying the price for their strategic mistakes.
The major disaster is that these regimes, including Egypt, still stumble in dealing with this phenomenon and blame other parties instead of putting their finger on the wound and seriously starting the correct treatment for this epidemic that has infected them and is corroding their body day by day.
At the time terrorism struck Arab Egypt, it was present in Sinai, and what caught my attention were the words of the drivers who transported me from the airport in Sharm El-Sheikh to the south. Before reaching the first security checkpoint, he warned me to identify myself as German or say I am from 'Arab Israel,' and he immediately regretted this expression, saying, 'Palestine and the Palestinians are the crown of all of us, but unfortunately, things changed after the revolution.' He began to explain from his perspective: Hamas's support for Morsi's regime and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt differs from the Egyptians' stance, and today Palestinians are suspected by security agencies of supporting terrorism in Sinai!
During my stay in Egypt, I thought long about the words of the cheerful young driver… When he took me back to the airport, terrorism had struck Arish… He spoke to me during our return about his pain and tears in his eyes… Since returning from Egypt, the question in my mind is: Is Egypt justified in accusing Hamas of supporting terrorism? Is this a tactic by the Egyptian regime, or is it a blatant expression of confusion in dealing with the terrorism issue? Many questions prompted me to write this analysis and shed light on this issue that will accompany us for many years, unfortunately.
Without a doubt, Hamas, with its Brotherhood roots, sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and rejoiced at the Brotherhood's electoral victory and Morsi's rise to power in the largest Arab country. Hamas saw Morsi's rise as support and a near rescue after its military coup against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and its reckless foreign policy shifts from the Syrian-Iranian embrace to the Qatari one. Although Hamas has repeatedly affirmed since its founding in 1988 that it does not interfere in the internal affairs of any Arab brotherly country, it broke this rule in Egypt and later in Syria, biting the hand that gave it shelter and a warm embrace. The Egyptian accusations brought by President Sisi are many… but I will suffice with two, as they are frequently circulated in Egyptian media and after the terrorist operation in Arish:
The first accusation claims that Hamas planned and executed Morsi's prison escape and helped the Brotherhood plant explosives in churches and police headquarters to blow them up after the Brotherhood lost the elections in Egypt. These accusations have not yet been supported by any conclusive evidence or clear proof of Hamas's involvement in this 'Brotherhood conspiracy.' However, this claim remains entrenched in Egyptians' minds and has unfortunately become an accepted fact.
The second Egyptian accusation alleges that tunnels built between Gaza and Sinai were also used to smuggle terrorists from Gaza to Sinai and supply them with weapons and ammunition through these tunnels.
Before dealing with these two accusations, it must be noted that the accused is innocent until proven guilty… Hamas is an ideological movement that adopts Islam as its goal and path, with roots firmly in the Muslim Brotherhood, but it is also pragmatic, dealing from its early days with challenges based on profit and loss… Yes, it has sometimes erred in its calculations, but it is far from being a reckless movement seeking quick gains and instant successes!
Personally, I do not believe that the entire Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, with its size, expansion, complexity, and spread among all layers of Egyptian society, including the army and security and intelligence apparatus, needed Hamas and its members' help to smuggle its leaders from Egyptian prisons… It is possible that some Hamas members present in Egypt during this period, naturally having close relations with the Brotherhood, slipped and got involved with Brotherhood members in prison raids and smuggling prisoners… Scientific analysis of Hamas's movement and dealings leads us to the conviction that the possibility of official involvement of the movement and its military leadership in such acts is very low!
As for the accusation that tunnels were used to infiltrate Salafi terrorists into Sinai after training in Gaza, this is very possible for several reasons:
First, after the coup in Gaza, Hamas was politically besieged in all fields, and the movement's leaders felt the world closing in on them. Some saw the way out by marketing Hamas as a moderate Islamic movement… Hamas tried to present itself to the world as a movement that rejects and fights Islamic extremism… For this goal, the movement briefly overlooked the Salafi movement in Gaza, which began spreading before the coup and increased its influence afterward, returning in 2009 to strike the Salafi base with fire without mercy. Some of these radical groups fled Hamas's wrath to Sinai, while others remained in Gaza, some of whom later left through tunnels and joined terrorist groups in Syria… So the possibility that elements of Palestinian Salafi terrorist groups infiltrated from Gaza to Sinai and joined similar Egyptian, foreign, and Arab terrorist elements coming from Syria and Libya to Sinai must be taken into account, and the events prove the validity of this accusation…
The other reason is that the tunnel owners in Gaza sought quick profit without caring about what passed through the tunnels and to whom… Their main concern was the price! Therefore, their services were subject only to the price rule, and it is possible that Salafi elements, who proved their financial resources never dry up, paid sums to smuggle their members and weapons to Sinai to join their terrorist counterparts there, especially after the so-called 'Arab Spring.' It is also possible that Hamas, which was experiencing a severe financial crisis, did not pay proper attention to what was happening inside the tunnels, focusing only on collecting taxes on tunnel imports.
As for the Egyptian accusation that Hamas supplies terrorists in Sinai with weapons, ammunition, and equipment, this is a false accusation… Even if Hamas's political leadership sometimes maneuvered with its loyalties and alliances, this never cast a shadow on the purity and integrity of Hamas's military leadership, whose struggle history attests to this… Regardless of whether we agree with its struggle path and mechanisms or not… Hamas also knows that its stability in power and protection of its rule is linked to the satisfaction of Gaza's people with its political, military, and economic conduct, and it also knows that this satisfaction is directly connected to the Rafah crossing… Hamas is not a reckless movement that risks people's anger by closing the crossing and bearing responsibility for this closure!
Accusations are no longer limited to Hamas and its members but have become directed at all Palestinians, burning everyone indiscriminately!
What is the purpose of spreading these rumors and accusations published by the Egyptian government and circulated by the media, becoming daily talk after every terrorist operation on social media, as I personally experienced a few days ago in Sinai?
First, Islamist terrorism did not begin with the emergence of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and its terrorist acts in the United States, nor did it spread only with the emergence of ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and similar takfiri terrorist groups… Islamist terrorism with Islamic roots began in Egypt and reached its peak with the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. At that time, there were twelve extremist Egyptian Salafi movements openly calling for jihad…
Second, the fertile ground where Islamist terrorism grew was prepared and nurtured in Egypt… The Muslim Brotherhood is the framework from which most takfiri movements worldwide emerged, from Al-Qaeda and ISIS in the East to Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab in Africa to Abu Sayyaf in East Asia and terrorist cells in Europe and America… All were raised and nurtured on the Brotherhood's thought and Al-Azhar's jurisprudence and its sheikhs, who had open doors for communication and spreading their jihadi takfiri thought widely through television, radio, internet, mosques, associations, and institutions, with all this happening under the watchful eyes of Egyptian security agencies, spreading their poisonous thought within the Islamic nation.
Third, Al-Azhar, supported by Egyptian governments for decades with large sums, teaches curricula of killing, calls for pursuing those who abandon prayer, killing infidels of other religions, burning their churches and temples, enslaving their girls, openly calls for physical violence and rape, and spreads the terrorist takfiri thought of Abu Taymiyyah and the false and offensive hadiths of Bukhari and Muslim against the Greatest Prophet and the noble religion, without restriction… Al-Azhar sheikhs named the Taliban in Afghanistan 'mujahideen' and called the ISIS terror emirate the Islamic State. Anyone following the posts of advisor Ahmed Abdo Maher about Al-Azhar's curricula discovers the extent of this institution's involvement, which enjoys the Egyptian government's patronage and support, in terrorism and promoting terrorist thought.
Fourth, the social and economic situation of Egyptians living in Sinai is very miserable, pushing them strongly into the arms of Islamist terrorism, either as participants or supporters and hosts, providing logistical services to terrorists in Sinai's complex terrain… The Egyptian government realizes this fact and knows that securing Sinai requires, above all, improving the economic situation of its residents and providing jobs for them, and also knows that security cannot be maintained by deploying the army and security forces only in specific locations.
Fifth, the Egyptian government still conceals the number of Egyptians involved in terrorist groups inside and outside the country, although information from Syrian security agencies speaks of thousands who went to Syria and joined ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra ranks… Naturally, after the defeats inflicted by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies on terrorist groups, members of these groups flee and try to hide in an environment that embraces them and does not raise suspicion… Sinai, with its terrain, vast spaces, and sparse population, meets all conditions and requirements for terrorist fugitives.
From what we have disliked above, we conclude that the accusations published by President Sisi's government and adopted by the media are mostly false accusations aimed primarily at covering up the failure to confront terrorist movements in Egypt and the unwillingness, for narrow tactical reasons, to fight the roots and intellectual sources of this terrorism… The Palestinian's position in the dock is a free service to the occupation and its daily terrorism in occupied Palestine… The random division made by Egyptian security agencies between Palestinians inside, those from the West Bank, and the Palestinian people in Gaza is itself a slander serving the same goal pursued by occupation governments since the establishment of the occupation state… The Egyptian government and its security agencies know perfectly well that the people of Egypt and Palestine are brothers in blood and destiny, and Egypt's security is linked to Gaza and Palestine's security and vice versa.
Confronting Islamist terrorism in North Sinai is the task of Egyptian and Palestinian security agencies, and only through cooperation between brothers based on respecting each party's privacy and national security can this step succeed
