Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk met in mid-June in Beirut with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Abu Marzouk arrived in Beirut following the expulsion from Qatar of several other top Hamas officials, most of whom had settled in the Gulf state after being freed from Israeli jails in the 2011 prisoner exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Qatar had recently ordered them to leave, under pressure from Sunni Muslim states that regard the emirate as supporting terror.

Before traveling to Lebanon, Abu Marzouk met in Cairo with Egyptian intelligence chief Khaled Fawzy. In a certain sense, there seems to be a contradiction in these talks: How can senior Hamas officials, who have been assiduously courting Egypt in a bid for improved relations, be meeting with Nasrallah, a Cairo enemy and Iran ally? Moreover, is it possible that Hamas has found a way to extricate itself from the Catch-22 in which it is entangled without having to take sides?

As previously reported on several occasions in Al-Monitor, the armed wing of Hamas has been urging the movement’s political leadership to forge closer ties with Iran, hoping for armaments from Tehran in preparation for a future military confrontation with Israel. In recent months, Tehran has renewed economic assistance to Hamas, albeit on a far smaller scale than in the past. Arms from Iran have become increasingly important for the military wing given Egypt’s anti-Islamist activities in the Sinai Peninsula and along the Gaza border and its view of Hamas as a terror organization that requires monitoring. The Egyptian government is making it virtually impossible to smuggle weapons and ammunition into Gaza, unlike the days of former President Hosni Mubarak.

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