""Many news outlets reported cheers in Gaza when Morsy was
announced as president of Egypt. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum had said, “The
Egyptian nation did not elect a president just for Egypt, but for Arab and
Islamic nations too.” A few months on, there doesn’t seem to be much to
celebrate. The border restrictions haven’t been lifted, and Gaza’s “allies” in
Egypt destroyed the tunnels that the Gazans depended on for their livelihood —
tunnels that had survived the despotic Mubarak years. “I think it’s a mistake
that some people expected a lot from the new political regime (in Egypt),” Ghazi
Hamad, Hamas’s deputy foreign minister finally said, breaking the Gazan
government’s long weeks of silence.
In fact, it was Qatar who moved faster in Gaza than its
Brotherhood allies. In the past few weeks, Qatar has opened a diplomatic office
in Gaza, announced the financing of over a quarter of a billion dollars of
infrastructure in the besieged strip, and announced a visit by its Emir to the
strip. By early October, Hamas’s frustration with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood led
them to remove a giant poster depicting Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh with Morsy,
replacing it with one that read “Thank you, Qatar.”" (thanks "Ibn Rushd")
