Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

For us, the key point about this week’s Israel-Palestinian prisoner-swap deal is the boost it has given to post-Mubarak Egypt’s regional role.  It is possible to see this as a welcome reaffirmation of Egypt’s role as a constructive interlocutor between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  A less positive assessment is that it provides a further indication of the growing closeness between Hamas and Egypt.

The problem with the positive interpretation is that it assumes that the deal is more beneficial for Israel than for Hamas.  But that is not how it is being interpreted in Egypt or in the Palestinian territories.  The popular Egyptian reaction is indeed that the deal does mark a return by Egypt to a leading regional role, but this is precisely because it has turned its back on Camp David and adopted a more pro-Palestinian stance.

The facts tend to support this view.  One of the first moves of the new Egyptian regime was to reopen the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip.  It has also, under the auspices of new intelligence chief Murad Muwafi, mediated a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to bring an end to five years of mutual hostility.  Now Egyptian intelligence has played a key role in the prisoner deal between Hamas and Israel that saw the exchange of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.  As part of the process, Egypt has received an official apology from Israel for the shooting of Egyptian border guards after a cross-border terrorist attack on an Israeli convoy in August.

The Hamas interpretation of the deal is particularly interesting.  Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh made much of two points.  The first was that included amongst the released Palestinians were prisoners from a range of Palestinian factions, in addition to Hamas, including Fateh, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Resistance Committees, and Fateh al-Intifada.  The point Haniyeh was making was that Hamas regards Fateh, Islamic Jihad, and the other Palestinian factions “as brethren”.  It’s not true, of course, but it will play well domestically and will undoubtedly help to boost Hamas’s popularity at a time when it has been on the slide.

The second point is of greater significance.  Haniyeh said that there was great symbolism in the fact that the released prisoners came not just from the West Bank and Gaza Strip but also from Jerusalem and Israel (“the lands of 1948”).  He said: “This deal once again delineated the borders of Palestine... the borders of Palestine are the borders of this deal.”

Haniyeh also said, with regard to Palestinian prisoners still in Israeli jails, “we will not forget you”.  This point was made even more forcefully by a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Abu-Ubaydah.  He said: “We will not be at ease until, with the help of God, we release our brave prisoners and glorious female prisoners from the occupation’s jails.”

Western diplomatic sources believe that any boost to Hamas as a result of the prisoner releases will be short-lived.  They point out that Hamas’s popularity is well down on its 2006 high-point and that it still has to grapple with issues such as massive unemployment, said by the UN to be over 45% in the Gaza Strip.  They also say that Hamas will suffer because of its support for Syria’s President Assad.  All of this is true, but it underestimates the positive consequences of the legitimization of the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas’s parent organization) in Egypt and the effect that popular opinion in Egypt is now having on the interim regime’s foreign policy.