Hamas, the Sunni Islamist terror group that controls the Gaza Strip, has denied that the government of Qatar has stopped financing its activities, contradicting a report last week in Arab media that claimed Doha had ceased its funding of the jihadist group in an attempt at detente with Egypt.
Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas co-founder who once advocated for the killing of Jews worldwide, said that the Kuwaiti paper’s report was wholly untrue. He also denied the report’s claim that Qatar was asking his terror group to change its hostile positions on Egypt. “Hamas does not meddle in the internal affairs of Egypt. … Nor does Hamas pose a threat to Egypt’s national security,” said Zahar. Multiple recent reports, however, claimed that Hamas has helped fellow terror groups stage joint attacks in the Sinai Peninsula against the Egyptian military.
He continued, asserting that Hamas has no issue with a Qatar-Egypt reconciliation and arguing that Arabs should instead focus on Israel, reported The Jerusalem Post.
Zahar exclaimed, “We are wasting Arab efforts on internal differences, while the enemy is waging war on us and confiscating our rights in Jerusalem.”
Last week, Kuwait’s Al-Jarida news reported that Qatar had pledged to help stop Hamas’s constant incitement against the government of Egypt under new President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Hamas was seen as a close ally of Egypt’s previous Muslim Brotherhood (MB) regime, but relations soured when the Brotherhood was overthrown in Egypt’s second political revolution.
The terror group became a natural ideological ally of Egypt under MB President Mohamed Morsi. Hamas has described itself in its charter as “one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.” Hamas, along with allies Qatar and Turkey, all remain close to the global Brotherhood.
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