Media coverage
Le Monde · 2011-12-23
The article describes how Hamas used its 24th anniversary rally in Gaza to showcase its popularity and military record at a time when Islamic Jihad criticizes it for moderation and for trying to preserve the truce with Israel. It also argues that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is pushing Hamas closer to the Brotherhood, including accepting a reconciliation agreement with Fatah under Egyptian pressure as part of a broader strategy of reassurance and political consolidation.
The article describes how Hamas used its 24th anniversary rally in Gaza to showcase its popularity and military record at a time when Islamic Jihad criticizes it for moderation and for trying to preserve the truce with Israel. It also argues that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is pushi…
If they had no other worries, the people of Gaza might almost have laughed at this official statistic: “350,000 people” were said to have attended, on 14 December, in Katiba Square, the 24th anniversary of Hamas! 100,000 would already have been an impressive turnout, even taking into account the fact that schoolchildren were mobilized for the event, and that civil servants did not receive their monthly salary until... 15 December.
It was a day of large numbers, on which it was announced that since its founding in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (assassinated by Israel in 2004), as the “wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine,” the Islamic Resistance Movement had killed 1,354 Israelis, lost 1,848 “martyrs,” launched 11,093 rockets, and carried out 1,117 attacks, including 87 suicide bombings.
This macabre accounting serves a political objective: at a time when Islamic Jihad continues to grow stronger by stigmatizing the moderation of Hamas, which is striving to preserve the truce with Israel, Hamas is touting its record in the struggle against the Israeli occupier and insisting on its presumed popularity.
The demonstration does not really convince Ahmad Al-Modalal, a member of the political bureau of Islamic Jihad: “Hamas and we each have our own political vision,” he explains to Le Monde. “It is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, positions itself pragmatically, accepts participation in all elections. It wants to remain a party of government, to become a respectable party, and it will increasingly become a relay of the Brotherhood in Gaza.”
The rapprochement with the Brotherhood, indeed, continues to grow: besides the fact that Gaza’s leaders now spend a great deal of time in Cairo, they have accepted, at the urgent request of the Egyptian authorities and the Brotherhood, to initial a reconciliation agreement with Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. In Egypt, the Brotherhood’s political strategy is to reassure, in order better to consolidate its power, which cannot be reconciled with a state of belligerence with Israel.
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Text © Le Monde — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source