Hamas isn’t just finding an unsympathetic ear from Egypt in its fight with Israel. Egypt is telling the Muslim Brotherhood front group to go pound sand. This is not sitting well with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan: Speaking with Oxymoronic backdrop.
As Israel is stepping up its ground offensive in Gaza, Hamas is increasingly finding itself lacking the support of international outrage compared to previous battles with Israel. Increasingly either alienated or ignored more than it’s used to, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (one and the same) is looking to Turkey for help.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday slammed Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as an illegitimate tyrant, saying that Cairo could not be relied upon to negotiate a ceasefire with Israel.
“Is Sisi a party (to a ceasefire)? Sisi is a tyrant himself,” Erdogan told reporters.
“He is not different from the others,” he said, adding that it was Egypt’s current rulers who were blocking humanitarian aid channels to the Gaza Strip ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement.
While Erdogan was busy defending Hamas against the likes of… Egypt, the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas was meeting with him and Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul.
Palestinian authority leader Abbas’s visit to Turkey is part of a short tour of regional countries and is being seen as an effort to consolidate support for the Palestinians amid an ongoing offensive by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Semih Idiz, a diplomatic columnist for the Turkish newspaper Taraf and the Al Monitor website, says Abbas will receive strong support from Ankara but says the Turkish government will keep Hamas informed of the meetings.
“He is wanting to appear to rally support for the Palestinians at a time like this,” he said. “But as Mahmud Abbas is Ankara talking to Prime Minister Erdogan and President Gul we hear that Foreign Minister Davutoglu is on the phone to Khaled Meshaal the political leader of Hamas to reassure that talks with Abbas are not excluding Hamas.”
As a leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal is also a high-ranking terrorist.
The alliance between the Palestinians and Turkey is reminiscent of the 2010 Gaza Flotilla, which was commissioned by Turkey.
Prior to the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi in Egypt last year, Hamas could definitely rely on Egypt. To say things have changed is an understatement. According to one report, after one year of Muslim Brotherhood rule, Egyptians are quite fed up with the group’s Palestinian arm (Hamas) and have less than no interest in helping them:
After Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal criticized Egyptian inaction in Gaza, Egyptian columnists responded emphatically.
“[Meshaal], we are tired of defending the [Palestinian] cause that you have sold for cheap to an MB (Muslim Brotherhood) gang whose way you followed even though they have lost their [own] way,” wrote columnist Hamdi Razaq. He also called Meshaal out for living in luxurious Qatari hotels instead of fighting in Gaza.
The current Egyptian regime that has Erdogan so roiled also appears to be supporting Israel more than the Obama administration, which is increasingly preoccupied with more and more distractions it is finding more difficult to spin to its advantage.
Currently, there is the rise of ISIS / ISIL in Iraq, which is serving to dwarf any perceived atrocities by Israel; the invasion of the U.S. by Central American illegal aliens; and most recently, the shooting down of a Malaysian commercial airliner by Russian separatists.
A consequence of all this has been that so called Palestinian plight is having to share the spotlight with other events and Pallywood productions aren’t getting as many takers at the box office.