Publication
Omar Shaban Ismail · Al-Monitor · 2013
Al-Monitor 2013 analysis of Gaza-Sinai tensions and their impact on Egypt-Hamas cooperation: Hamas faced accusations of facilitating jihadist movement through tunnels while having its own reasons to prevent such activity, creating a complex dynamic that constrained any bilateral improvement.
Al-Monitor 2013 analysis of Gaza-Sinai tensions and their impact on Egypt-Hamas cooperation: Hamas faced accusations of facilitating jihadist movement…
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Tensions between Gaza and the Sinai insurgency — which intensified after the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the period of security vacuum that followed — complicated Hamas's relationship with Egypt in ways that differed fundamentally from the Hamas-Egypt dynamic under Mubarak. Hamas was accused of facilitating the movement of Salafi jihadist groups through Gaza tunnels, providing them with training, or at minimum turning a blind eye to their activities. Hamas denied these allegations and had its own reasons to prevent Sinai-based jihadist activity: militant groups operating from Sinai represented a threat to Hamas's control of Gaza and to any Egypt-Gaza diplomatic relationship that Hamas depended on economically. The result was a complex dynamic: Gaza-Sinai tensions that limited Egypt-Hamas cooperation, while simultaneously creating pressure on Hamas to demonstrate credible counterterrorism capacity to an Egyptian audience skeptical of Islamist movements.
Topic: Regional & International Politics — Sinai · Hamas · Egypt · economy — Text © Al-Monitor — archived here with attribution to the source. — Original source