Senior Hamas Official Says Hamas And Iran Resuming Relations

0

French media is reporting that senior Hamas leader has said that Hamas has resumed relations with Iran after a temporarty “falling out” over the Syria conflict. According to an AFP report:

Hamas
Hamas

December 9, 2013 Gaza City: Hamas has ‘resumed’ relations with Iran after a temporary falling out over the Syrian conflict, a senior member of the Palestinian Islamist movement said on Monday.

‘Relations between Hamas and Iran have resumed,’ Mahmoud Al Zahar told reporters at a news conference in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas since 2007.

Ties had been ‘affected by the Syria situation and Hamas has withdrawn from Syria so that it can’t be identified with this or that side,’ he said.

‘We’ve confirmed we are not interfering in the Syrian case, or in any other Arab country.’ Iran had long supported the Hamas against their shared enemy Israel.

But exiled Hamas chief Khalid Meshaal left his base in Damascus after the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, criticising President Bashar Al Assad and moving to Qatar.

Subsequent reports that Hamas was supporting the Sunni-led rebels in Syria against supporters of Al Assad, such as the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, led to a decrease in crucial Iranian funding of Hamas, according to media reports.

Read the rest here.

The GMBDW had already reported in October that Hamas had succeeded in re-establishing close ties with Iran which are known to have suffered when Hamas moved closer to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood government. Following the deposition of Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian military, Hamas has been struggling to find new sources of support as well as to re-establish old sources such as Iran.

The Hamas charter says that it is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine” and soon after Hamas took over the Gaza strip, Muslim Brotherhood representatives traveled to Gaza from Egypt through the newly-opened border to review Hamas military formations.  A Hamas journalist has acknowledged the role that the “international Muslim Brotherhood” has played in providing funds for the purchase of weapons and Hamas is known to be supported financially and politically by the global Muslim Brotherhood. A Muslim Brotherhood spokesman revealed that a coalition of London-based Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, were behind the mass demonstrations staged to protest Israeli actions in the 2008 Gaza war and the Global Muslim Brotherhood and its Turkish affiliates were also intimately involved, along with the Turkish government, in the June 2010 Gaza flotilla that was involved in a violent altercation with Israeli naval forces.

Comments are closed.