From the National Interest:
In a big move, that nevertheless should not surprise those paying attention, Egypt has ruled Hamas to be a terrorist organization.
The BBC:
“It has been proven without any doubt that the movement has committed acts of sabotage, assassinations and the killing of innocent civilians and members of the armed forces and police in Egypt,” Judge Mohamed el-Sayed said, according to state news agency Mena.
Besides Hamas, which is now entirely cut off and surrounded by enemies, the biggest losers from this verdict are Turkey and the Obama Administration.
Turkey has positioned itself as Hamas’ biggest backer, partly out of genuine conviction on the part of Turkey’s ruling Islamists, partly as a play to regain the leadership of the Middle East that the Turks held in Ottoman times. Now it is having its impotence effectively demonstrated as Egypt and its gulf allies trash Turkey’s dreams of regional leadership.
The Obama administration had similarly based its Middle East policy in large part on outreach to the ‘moderate Islamists’ of whom the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is the Palestinian branch) and which numbers both Turkey’s Erdogan and Egypt’s pre-coup president Morsi among its supporters, are the most prominent force. That policy is now in tatters.
No comments:
Post a Comment