Egypt’s Mursi and Hamas’s Haniya discuss Gaza

Egypt’s President Mohammed Mursi and Hamas’s leader in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniya, on Thursday examined easing restrictions on residents of the Palestinian enclave, Mursi’s spokesman said.

Haniya’s visit to Cairo, the second by a top-ranking Hamas official since the Islamist Mursi’s election last month, came days after Palestinian officials said Egypt had eased visa requirements for Gazans under 40.

Morsi and Haniya discussed “solutions relating to lifting the siege and alleviating the suffering of Gazans,” said Mursi spokesman Yassir Ali in comments published by the official MENA news agency.

Haniya made no statement after the talks.

Last week, he had hailed the meeting as a “fruit of the revolution” that overthrew Mursi’s predecessor Hosni Mubarak early last year. Hamas is an offshoot of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 after routing president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah from the territory neighboring Israel and Egypt, hoped Mursi’s election victory would strengthen its position.

Gaza has been under semi-blockade by Israel and Egypt since Hamas took over the enclave. Mubarak eased the blockade under pressure in 2010, but did not allow commercial traffic through the Rafah border crossing as Hamas had hoped.

Mursi met Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal last week, after saying that he would not favor either of their factions as Egypt attempts to reconcile them.