Hamas urges faith in Arab Spring despite Morsi ouster

Ismail Haniya, head of the Hamas government in Gaza, appealed in a Friday sermon to have faith in the Arab Spring despite the ouster of Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi by the army. "Do not fear for the Palestinian cause or for the resistance (against Israel) or for Gaza. Egypt is behind us, as are the Arab and Islamic countries," Haniya said. "We believe good will emerge from this Arab Spring, these revolutions and this rebirth. We expect the Arab Spring cycle to continue until its objectives are attained, including our own cause." Haniya's political adviser Yussef Rizq on Thursday criticised on his Facebook page the ouster of Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president. "What happened in Egypt, his eviction and removal of power, is not part of a genuine democratic process, because they used military force and not the voice of the people through elections," Rizq said. Hamas has not officially reacted to Morsi's removal whose election it feted in June 2012 as he hails from the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, to which the Palestinian Islamist movement is affiliated. Under Morsi, as well as former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, Egypt promoted reconciliation efforts between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement which governs the West Bank and Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip.