Good News; War Postponed: Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Angry at Hamas, Cuts Off Weapons

Something both positive and revealing has just happened and while it undermines one prediction of mine it reinforces another. I’m delighted to see it.

I predicted that since Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a radical, Islamist group that wants to wipe Israel off the map and the ruling Hamas group in the Gaza Strip is part of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as also being a radical Islamist group and wants to wipe Israel off the map that the Egyptian regime would cooperate with Hamas in fomenting terrorism against Israel by facilitating the flow of arms, money and terrorists to the Gaza Strip. for that purpose.

In fact, though, it has now become clear that the Brotherhood regime is stopping weapons and other things from entering the Gaza Strip. (As did its predecessor, the Mubarak regime.)

But why, given that my above-explained chain of reasoning is true, is this happening?

The answer lies in another point I’ve made: That many revolutionary Islamists are over-confident (partly in the face of a weak United States; partly due to their ideology that puts the deity, literally, on their side, and partly because of the big gains they are making throughout the region and even the world.

These groups also bicker and even fight among themselves, most notably but not exclusively due to Sunni-Shia conflicts. So radical Islamist groups overreach and thus suffer self-inflicted defeats.This is what’s happening with Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood’s reasons are is not benign. It seeks to consolidate control over a highly populated country and fundamentally transform it into a Sharia state under the Brotherhood’s perpetual rule. Hamas, however, by its nature, cannot accept Islamism in one country (to paraphrase Stalin). [Note below] Hamas isn’t interested in building up a Sharia state in the Gaza Strip as its main goal because it seeks to conquer Israel and the West Bank.

 

The reason, then, why the Brotherhood is stopping more aid or encouragement to Hamas is that the Egyptian regime doesn’t want a war or even a high level of conflict now. A second reason is simply that Hamas has become entangled with smaller radical Islamist groups that are waging armed struggle against Egypt, seek to overthrow the Egyptian government, and stage (without Egyptian permission) attacks against Israel across the Egypt-Israel border.

Here’s the key statement from Issam al-Haddad, a senior Brotherhood official and a presidential advisor on foreign policy, that the flow of weapons to Hamas (and then back into the Sinai terrorists) will undermine stability in the Sinai Peninsula.Another factor cited is the need to fulfill Egypt’s obligation under the ceasefire agreement it helped broker between Israel and Hamas. U.S. pressure to keep this pledge was an incentive. This is to the credit of the Obama Administration.