Hamas failed again last week to convince Cairo that it harbors no hostile intentions toward Egypt; the Islamic resistance movement swore that there is no cooperation with Islamic State in Sinai and vehemently denied any involvement in the assassination of Egyptian attorney-general Hashem Barkat last year. It would be difficult, however, to say which of the two is more distrustful of the other. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood – and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi came to power after ousting Muhammad Morsi, a member of that organization.

Yet geopolitical considerations make some form of dialogue mandatory. There is the Palestinian issue, with Egypt keen to maintain its position as a go-between. Of late, Saudi Arabia has hinted that too much pressure on Hamas might send it to search help from Iran, endangering the Sunni consensus against the ayatollahs.

It was Ahmed Yassin, a Muslim Brother, who in 1987 founded Hamas in Gaza as a fighting branch of the Brotherhood dedicated to destroying Israel and establishing an Islamic state on the ruins of the Jewish state. After the Gaza disengagement in 2005, Hamas strengthened its military and political grip on Gaza and drove the Fatah movement out in the bloody coup of 2007. An unholy alliance between the Sunni Jihadi movement and Shia Iran bolstered Hamas, a steady supply of missiles, weapons, and explosives smuggled from Sudan through Egypt and then to Gaza by way of hundreds of underground tunnels.

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