IT IS no longer so easy. When Egypt brokered a ceasefire to end the last Israeli war with Gaza, in 2012, the then president, Muhammad Morsi, a Muslim Brother, enjoyed good relations with Hamas, an offshoot of the pan-Arab Islamist movement. He talked to Israel as well as to Qatar, which has ties to the Palestinian organisation that rules the Gaza Strip.
Two years later, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is struggling in his attempts bring an end to a ghastly repeat conflict that has already outdone 2012 in both length and death toll. A proposal, along the same lines as 2012, put forward by the Egyptians (seemingly with the advice of Tony Blair, the Quartet’s envoy to Palestine who enjoys close relations with Mr Sisi) on July 14th quickly fell apart, as Hamas claimed not to have been involved in negotiations. One Hamas official claimed the group had not even been notified.
On July 22nd John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, and the UN’s Ban Ki-moon held meetings in Cairo to add oomph to the efforts and announced that progress had been made. But their diplomatic zeal may be in vain: Egypt nowadays is simply not well placed to broker peace.
Since Egypt’s army, then headed by Mr Sisi, ousted the Muslim Brotherhood in a coup in July 2013, official policy towards Hamas has hardened. Egyptian officials accused Hamas, without presenting evidence, of opening prisons during the revolution of 2011 that toppled Hosni Mubarak. In August Egypt shut its Rafah border crossing with Gaza indefinitely after clashes. An Egyptian court also banned Hamas from carrying out activities in the country. Egypt has lost influence thanks to its terrible relations with Doha, the Qatari capital, where Hamas’s external leadership is based, over the Gulf state’s close ties to the Brotherhood.
Egypt has long enjoyed links with both Israel—with which it has a peace treaty—and Hamas, but that has become more lopsided under Mr Sisi. He appears to reckon that cosying up to Israel and putting the cosh on Hamas will help stabilise Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, where disgruntled Islamists have sought to make mayhem—among other things, by assassinating soldiers—since last year’s coup. The Egyptian media, which obsequiously says what it thinks the regime wants to hear, has been unusually hostile to Hamas, too. Azza Samy, deputy editor of al-Ahram, a state-owned daily, tweeted: “Thanks to you Netanyahu, May God send many of your likes to crush Hamas, agents of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
That does not go down too well at home, where many Egyptians sympathise with the Palestinians and grandly consider themselves the Arab world’s “beating heart”. Mr Sisi may think he will benefit from the war in Gaza, if the Israelis smash Hamas. But a president who cannot negotiate peace, unlike his maligned predecessor, does not look too good, either.
