US media is reporting that Hamas has condemned the Egyptian decision to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and rejected calls to sever its connections with the Brotherhood. According to a Reuters report:
Hamas
REUTERS 12/31/2013 The Palestinian group Hamas condemned on Tuesday Egypt’s designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group last week, reaffirming its solidarity with the ousted movement despite a crippling blockade imposed by Cairo.
Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas Gaza government, also snubbed calls by some rival Palestinian factions to sever its connections with the Brotherhood.
We reject such a classification for the Muslim Brotherhood group. No one, regardless of its influence, can push Hamas or any of the Palestinian resistance factions to abandon their ideology, abandon their history,’ Haniyeh told reporters.
Egyptian prosecutors and officials say the Muslim Brotherhood has links with domestic Islamist militants who have stepped up attacks on security forces across the country.
They also accuse the group of plotting violence along with Islamist groups from neighboring countries, Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah.
Hamas, founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been seen as a major loser from the July 3rd ouster and arrest of elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who belonged to the Brotherhood.
Since then, tension has grown between Hamas and the army-backed Cairo government, and curbs on trade to Gaza mounted.
The Hamascharter says that it is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine” and soon after Hamas took over the Gaza strip, Muslim Brotherhood representatives traveled to Gaza from Egypt through the newly-opened border to review Hamas military formations. A Hamas journalist has acknowledged the role that the “international Muslim Brotherhood” has played in providing funds for the purchase of weapons and Hamas is known to be supported financially and politically by the global Muslim Brotherhood. A Muslim Brotherhood spokesman revealed that a coalition of London-based Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, were behind the mass demonstrations staged to protest Israeli actions in the 2008 Gaza war and the Global Muslim Brotherhood and its Turkish affiliates were also intimately involved, along with the Turkish government, in the June 2010 Gaza flotilla that was involved in a violent altercation with Israeli naval forces. Following a period of seeming ascension related to the period of Egyptian rule by the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization was forced to scramble to try and find other state sponsors after Mohamed Morsi was deposed as President. In September 2013, it appeared that Hamas had succeeded in re-establishing close ties with Iran. In January 2013, Israeli intelligence sources claimed that Turkey has replaced Iran as the chief source of Hamas financing.
