Despite disengagement, Hamas a Brotherhood affiliate at heart

 Ahmed Sameh Abdel Fattah

The terrorist Muslim Brotherhood started to take root and grow in Palestine as of 1935 when Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna sent his brother Abdurrahman and then-secretary-general of the Brotherhood Mohamed Asaad al-Hakim there.

The year 1943 was seminal for the growth of the Brotherhood in Palestine. In that year, the Brotherhood founded what came to be known as al-Makarem Society. This was followed by the establishment of a large number of Brotherhood organizations inside Palestine. Hamas was the last Brotherhood organization to be founded in Palestine, exactly in 1967.

Brotherhood subsidiaries in Palestine were part of the ideology and structure of the mother organization in Egypt. The organization exploited the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in mobilizing youths within its religious and ideological frameworks.

The 1948 war gave the Brotherhood’s jihadist propaganda a strong boost. It worked to convince youths that they had to join it in order to fight the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This means that the group used the Israeli occupation of Palestine to serve its own interests.

The Brotherhood tried more than once to join the Palestinian Liberation Organization in order to gain a foothold inside the Palestinian Authority. Nonetheless, Fatah Movement, which controls the organization, turned down Brotherhood requests in this regard.

Relations between the mother organization in Egypt and Brotherhood subsidiaries in Palestine remained strong for a long time. However, political developments in the Middle East region in the past five years destabilized relations between both sides. Sometime Hamas declares that it is an affiliate of the Brotherhood. Other times, it says it has disengaged from the group in an attempt to evade regional pressures.

Disengagement

Hamas issued a new political document in 2017 in which it outlined its internal and foreign policies. The most important part in the document was on the disengagement of the Palestinian movement from the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas did this in an attempt to improve its relations with Egypt and Arab Gulf state that back the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.

In the first article of the document, Hamas identifies itself as a Palestinian Islamic liberation movement that fights the Zionist project. This document was totally different from another document Hamas declared at the end of the 1980s, where Hamas says it is part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas disengaged from the Brotherhood in the 2017 document with the aim of evading tension in relations with Cairo where in 2015 a court accused Hamas abetting terrorist fighting the Egyptian army in Sinai. This made Hamas hurry to rescue its relations with Egypt, ones that were in danger, especially after the June 30, 2013 revolution.

Hamas did everything it could to cope with political developments in the region. Nevertheless, the movement’s relations with Iran continued to be a problem. These relations threatened Hamas’ relations with Arab states. The Palestinian movement did its best to strike a balance between its relations with Iran and its relations with Arab countries.

The Palestinian movement at the same time said it was ready to move ahead in reconciliation with other Palestinian factions. It did this – apart from disengaging from the Brotherhood – to curry favors with Egypt.

By the same document, Hamas wanted to introduce itself as a flexible Palestinian movement that wants to go hand in hand with changes happening in the region. Hamas tried to demonstrate this flexibility in the document itself. It said it would recognize the 1967 border. Nonetheless, it did not recognize the state of Israel.

The view is that Hamas introduced these cosmetic changes in order to win time and achieve the utmost benefit. At the core, Hamas remained the same, even after the issuance of this document.

Contradictory signals

Disengagement is a tactic well known inside radical organizations. These organizations use this tactic whenever they want to evade international pressures by giving the impression that they will pursue independent policies.

The fact is that Hamas did not change its discourse at its own free well or as a result of an ideological revision. This change came as a result of a change in the balance of power in the region, especially with the arrival to power in the US by Donald Trump.

Despite this, Hamas continued to act in a bizarre manner. The chief of the politburo of the movement, Khaled Meshaal, attended the 90th anniversary of the International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood in Istanbul. He also praised Hassan al-Banna. This shows that disengage from the Brotherhood was only done on paper.

Hamas also participated in a Muslim Brotherhood meeting in Doha in 2016. The meeting dwelt on the need for establishment a political council that coordinates Muslim Brotherhood policies in all countries. Meshaal attended this meeting, along with Ismail Hanieyh and Moussa Abu Marzouq.