When the Muslim Brotherhood government fell, the military leaders cracked down. They sentenced 100s of the Brotherhood’s leadership class to death. They also closed 95% of the tunnels that connected Egypt to Gaza, where the Brotherhood’s offshoot, Hamas, had gained power. The Egyptian move was economically devastating to Hamas. Hamas derived 40% of its tax revenue from tariffs on goods that flowed through those tunnels. Hamas needed to end that blockade, but it couldn’t strike Egypt, so it struck Israel. If Hamas could emerge as the heroic fighter in a death match against the Jewish state, if Arab TV screens were filled with dead Palestinian civilians, then public outrage would force Egypt to lift the blockade. Civilian casualties were part of the point. “Make no mistake, Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel. But Hamas is firing rockets at Tel Aviv and sending terrorists through tunnels into southern Israel while aiming, in essence, at Cairo.”

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