Hamas PM: Syrian rebels are heroes
Elior Levy, Ynet, Feb 24 2012
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh commented for the first time Friday on the ongoing bloodshed in Syria. Haniyeh hailed the “heroic Syrian struggle for democracy” during a rally at Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque. Haniyeh told several thousand cheering people who attended a rally in support of the Palestinians and Syrians:
I salute all the people of the Arab Spring, or rather the Islamic Winter. I salute the heroic Syrian people, who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.
The protesters chanted in response:
No Iran, no Hezbollah! Syria is Islamic!
This was the first public endorsement of the uprising in Syria by a Hamas leader. Relations between Hamas leadership and the Syrian president hit an all all-time low after Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal voiced his aversion of Assad’s actions. Haniyeh also urged the “salvation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” saying:
Jerusalem will remain ours. We’ve paid with blood to keep Jerusalem Arab and Muslim. I salute those going against the occupation and the herds of settlers and standing firm at the gates of Al-Aqsa to save Jerusalem and the mosque.
He reiterated that Hamas will never recognize Israel.
Hamas ditches Assad, backs Syrian revolt
Omar Fahmy, Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, Feb 24 2012
Hamas leaders turned publicly against their long-time ally Pres Assad of Syria on Friday, endorsing the revolt aimed at overthrowing his dynastic rule. The policy shift deprives Assad of one of his few remaining Sunni Muslim supporters in the Arab world. It was announced in Hamas speeches at Friday prayers in Cairo and a rally in the Gaza Strip. Hamas went public after nearly a year of equivocating. Their public abandonment of Assad casts immediate questions over Hamas’s future ties with its principal backer Iran, which has stuck by its ally Assad, as well as with Iran’s fellow Shi’ite allies in Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, visiting Egypt from the Gaza Strip, told thousands of Friday worshippers at al-Azhar:
I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.
Worshippers chanted in response:
We are marching towards Syria, with millions of martyrs! No Hezbollah and no Iran! The Syrian revolution is an Arab revolution!
Hamas and Hezbollah have long had a strategic alliance. Both have fought wars with Israel in the past six years. Hamas has been deeply embarrassed among Palestinians by its association with Assad. As the Sunni-Shi’ite split in the Middle East deepens, Hamas appears to have cast its lot with the powerful, Egypt-based Sunni Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological parent of Hamas. Hany al-Masri, a Palestinian political commentator, said Damascus might now opt to formally expel Hamas’s exile headquarters from Syria. He told Reuters:
This is considered a big step in the direction of cutting ties with Syria.
In Gaza, senior Hamas member Salah al-Bardaweel addressed thousands of supporters at a rally in Khan Younis refugee camp, sending “a message to the peoples who have not been liberated yet, those free peoples who are still bleeding every day.” Bardaweel said:
The hearts of the Palestinian people bleed with every drop of bloodshed in Syria. No political considerations will make us turn a blind eye to what is happening on the soil of Syria. Nations do not get defeated. They do not retreat and they do not get broken. We are on your side and on the side of all free peoples.
The crowd chanted:
Allah hu akbar! Victory to the people of Syria!
The divorce between Hamas and Damascus had been coming for months. Khaled Meshaal and his associates quietly quit their headquarters in Damascus and have stayed away from Syria for months now, although Hamas tried to deny their absence had anything to do with the revolt. Haniyeh visited Iran earlier this month on a mission to shore up ties with the power that has provided Hamas with money and weapons to fight Israel. It is not clear what the outcome of his visit has been, though the tone of the latest Hamas comments is hardly compatible with continued warm relations with Tehran. Rallies in favor of Syria’s Sunni majority have been rare in the coastal enclave but on Friday it seemed the Islamist rulers of the territory had decided to break the silence. Hamas-Hezbollah relations have been good in the past. But Hamas did not attack Israel when it was fighting Hezbollah in 2006 and Hezbollah did not join in when Israel mounted a major offensive against Hamas in Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009.
