Egypt’s dictator is aiding Gaza and boosting his image

AT FIRST SIGHT one might have thought Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi was running for president of Palestine. Dozens of billboards (one is pictured) appeared overnight in Gaza this May, each bearing the face of the Egyptian president and an emphatic quote. “The Palestinian cause is the central issue for Egypt,” read one. Main roads were lined with Egyptian flags. A crowd of young men stood outside a seaside hotel to cheer the arrival of Abbas Kamel, Mr Sisi’s intelligence chief, whose motorcade sped into Gaza on a sweltering summer morning. “You’d think it was Abdel Nasser come to liberate Palestine,” quipped an elderly bystander.The scene would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Along with Israel, Egypt has maintained a blockade on Gaza since 2007, when Hamas, a militant Islamist group, took power. Relations deteriorated further in 2013, when Mr Sisi overthrew an elected government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. His military-backed government saw Hamas as an outgrowth of the Brotherhood and was keen to strangle it. It flooded hundreds of tunnels that ran between Egypt and Gaza, cutting off a conduit for goods (and weapons) into the territory.