(Gaza) The Islamist movement Hamas said on Tuesday that its relations with Bashar al-Assad’s Syria were improving, after 10 years of coldness triggered by the Palestinian organization’s support for the Syrian anti-regime revolt.
Posted at 1:50 p.m.
“Contacts with Syria are improving to fully return to what they were, due to numerous visits by Hamas leaders to Syria,” a senior figure in the ruling Palestinian movement told AFP. in the Gaza Strip, on condition of anonymity.
“Syria supports the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people. Hamas values the relationship with Syria and with all Arab countries,” he added.
Contacted by AFP, the Syrian government did not comment on this information.
Formerly an ally of the Syrian regime, Hamas had bet on an overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad at the start of the war in 2011, triggered by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations. Its then leader, Khaled Meshaal, left Damascus in 2012 to settle in Qatar.
Hamas, which has controlled the Palestinian enclave of Gaza since 2007, is an organization considered “terrorist” by the United States, the European Union and Israel. The Jewish state has imposed a blockade on this micro-territory of 2.3 million inhabitants since the Islamists took power.
Hamas’ support for the Syrian opposition had for a time deteriorated its relations with Iran, support for Bashar al-Assad and on the other hand Israel’s number one enemy.
Since the start of the Syrian conflict, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian territory, targeting positions of the Assad regime, but also those of Iranian forces and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, another Damascus ally.
Israel regularly asserts that it will not allow Syria to become the bridgehead for Iranian forces.
Since 2011, the war in Syria has claimed the lives of around 500,000 people, devastated the country’s infrastructure and displaced millions of people.