At Border With Egypt, Hamas Sees Opportunity
Dusty and palm-dotted, this Palestinian frontier town abutting the northern edge of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has emerged as the starkest symbol of Hamas’s hopes for a new era of relations between Gaza and Egypt.
The Palestinian militant group has been isolated by Israel, the West — and, previously, by Egypt’s former autocracy — since it wrested control of this seaside territory in 2007. But with the rise of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas — a Brotherhood offshoot — sees new opportunity, and there is growing talk here that Egypt might lift the siege, initiating European-style passage for all, a free-trade zone, perhaps even an industrial park.
“We are looking for normalization,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas leader, said in an interview in Gaza City, where intersections are adorned with billboards of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi smilingly shaking hands against a backdrop of Egyptian pyramids.
The Gaza Strip is home to 1.7 million Palestinians, all living in an area roughly twice the size of Washington. Currently, a limited number of people but no goods cross through Rafah, Gaza’s only crossing not controlled by Israel, which severely restricts passage of products and people through two other entry points. Advocates say opening Rafah could end Gaza’s electricity shortages, reduce its massive unemployment and bring the smuggling of goods and people, which now takes place in tunnels beneath Rafah, above ground.
But Gaza’s Rafah dreams have not materialized as quickly as Hamas hoped, making the crossing also an emblem of the uncertainty in this shifting region. Egypt has bigger priorities, as it underscored after an assault on Egyptian soldiers last month, which Egypt blamed in part on Palestinian militants who had entered the increasingly restive Sinai Peninsula by tunnel.