Egypt Suddenly Realizes Banning Terrorists A Good Idea

Rafah, Egypt, March 4 – An Egyptian court declared the Hamas organization illegal today, signaling a sudden dawning on the country’s leadership that perhaps sheltering or condoning violent militant movements on one’s soil might not be the wisest course of action.

The court, whose ruling must receive government approval before it attains the force of law, declared the Palestinian militant group an unlawful entity, paving the way toward a seizure of its assets, a ban on its activities in Egypt, and the possible arrest of members found in Egypt. The move comes against the backdrop of ongoing violence in the Sinai peninsula between the Egyptian military and militant Islamic groups; the Egyptian authorities have repeatedly accused Hamas of involvement in attacks on Egyptian soldiers and civilians, including several terrorist bombings, finally waking up to the fact that keeping a violent Islamic fundamentalist paramilitary organization on your doorstep is one of the less intelligent policies.

Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Islamist organization that has also been banned in Egypt since the ouster last year of President Muhammad Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader who now stands accused of various treasonous crimes and ordering the killing of demonstrators. Since the military takeover, movement across the Gaza-Egypt border has been sharply curtailed, perhaps because Egyptian officials are beginning to grasp the notion that facilitating the activities of a terrorist organization ideologically committed to the resolution of conflict through violent means does not exactly dovetail with Egypt’s interests.

Until recent months, smuggling tunnels between Rafah, Gaza, and Rafah, Egypt, carried a steady flow of goods and people, benefiting Hamas, which oversaw the operation of the tunnels and collected a fee for their use. As Egypt tightened control, however, the availability of the tunnels has sharply diminished, once it occurred to Egypt’s government that stability and catering to the violent agenda of radical militant Islamists next door are not compatible.

Paradoxically, the flow of people to and from Gaza across its borders with Israel has far outstripped traffic with Egypt, by at least a factor of five. This includes patients seeking Israeli medical treatment, as well as select workers who provide a vital lifeline for their poverty-stricken families, in addition to the movement of agricultural and other exports.

In response to these developments in Egypt, Hamas leaders denounced the Israeli “blockade.”