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Egyptian court declares entirety of Hamas a terrorist organisation
On Saturday, an Egyptian court ruled that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, following the group’s active support for Islamist terror groups in the Sinai Peninsula.
Egyptian officials have long accused Hamas of aiding Sinai terror groups to launch attacks against Egyptian security personnel in the wake of the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. Egyptian authorities recently razed more than 800 homes in Rafah, to help create a buffer zone which aims to prevent the Hamas-supported smuggling of arms and fighters into the Sinai Peninsula from the Gaza Strip. Egypt has destroyed more than 1,500 smuggling tunnels in an attempt to stem the flow and has maintained an almost complete closure of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza.
According to the Mena state news agency, Judge Mohamed el-Sayed said on Saturday, “It has been proven without any doubt that the movement [Hamas] has committed acts of sabotage, assassinations and the killing of innocent civilians and members of the armed forces and police in Egypt.” The ruling against Hamas goes a step further than a previous decision in January which banned Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades.
In response, a Hamas statement described the Egyptian ruling as “shocking and is dangerous … it targets the Palestinian people and its factions of resistance.” The statement added, “It will have no influence on the Hamas movement.”
It is unclear exactly what impact the weekend ruling will have, with some Hamas officials based in Egypt. Meanwhile, Haaretz reports that a senior delegation of Islamic Jihad officials arrived in Cairo at the weekend in an attempt to broker an agreement between Egypt and Hamas over the opening of the Rafah border crossing.
The closure of Rafah is one reason behind the slow pace of reconstruction in Gaza, following Operation Protective Edge. In addition, although an agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) was reached last year for the PA to oversee Gaza reconstruction, disputes between the two mean it has never been implemented.