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SYRIA WAR

Hamas and Syria: Normalization after a decade of rupture

The Islamist movement controlling the Gaza Strip officially announced on Thursday the resumption of relations with the Syrian government after a decade-long hiatus caused by the 2011 revolution. 

Hamas and Syria: Normalization after a decade of rupture

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad receiving then-Palestinian National Authority Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas in Dec. 2006. (AFP file photo)

Hamas announced Thursday the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Syrian government — a move that came much to the Syrian regime’s delight but dismayed the opposition to the Damascus regime.

“Hamas confirms that it is going ahead with its decision to restore ties with the Syrian Arab Republic to serve the interests of the Arab and Islamic ummah [nation], and especially the Palestinian cause, in light of the escalation of regional and international developments concerning the Palestinian cause,” Hamas said in the statement, which it ostensibly issued in response to recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria.

The fact that Hamas made its announcement in the same statement condemning the Israeli airstrikes in Syria — which have been ongoing for several years now — does not seem trivial.

Hamas appears to be stressing that it shares a common enemy with Syria, according to Aron Lund, a Middle East researcher at the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI).

“This is probably a good way to sweeten what must be a very bitter pill to swallow for many supporters of the Palestinian movement,” Lund told L'Orient-Le Jour.

Indignation

In early 2012, Hamas left its offices in Damascus, after having been there since the late 1990s. The departure came as a result of Hamas condemning the Assad regime’s violent crackdown on the popular uprising that had broken out a year earlier.

The group was particularly outraged by the two-year siege imposed in 2013 by the regime loyalist forces on Palestinians in the Yarmouk refugee camp south of Damascus, which at the time was held by opposition fighters.

Deprived of food and all basic necessities, 200 of them had died of hunger, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

The departure of the Palestinian leadership from the Syrian capital — which paved the way for the movement’s establishment of headquarters in Qatar, Egypt and the Gaza Strip — marked a break in relations between Hamas and Damascus.

A decade later, Hamas’ announcement has sparked outrage among many Syrians.

“No surprise. This is not the first time a Palestinian organization has sided with a dictator or war criminal,” said one Twitter user, commenting on a tweet by Syrian journalist Fared Al Mahlool.

“They don’t even care about the welfare of the Palestinians, they just want an endless crisis to justify their existence and fuel the Palestinian cause, and Assad will help feed that,” the post added.

Hezbollah and Iran

While there are still unknown reasons behind this U-turn, signs emerged in June. “Communication with Syria is improving and is on its way to being entirely restored to what it used to be,” an anonymous senior Hamas official told AFP at the time.

Since the start of the Syrian revolution in 2011, differences within Hamas itself had emerged. Unlike the political wing of the Palestinian movement, which had in the past explicitly expressed its support for the rebels against Assad, the military wing of the group has remained close to Tehran, its main military supporter and sponsor of Damascus.

Since Thursday, several observers suggested that the announced normalization came about due to pressure from Hezbollah and Iran, which would hope to rebuild a new version of the resistance axis. Tehran and Damascus would serve as “the main state actors alongside armed groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis,” Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen, said Lund.

“Syria and Lebanon are the last Arab frontline states that are openly at war with Israel, so for Hamas this is a strategically important relationship,” the researcher added. For the Palestinian movement, opening up to the Syrian regime likely came in response to its political isolation and the marginalization of the Palestinian cause.

In May, a delegation from the political wing of Hamas visited Moscow amid the Russian offensive on Ukraine. The visit signaled Hamas’ and Moscow’s mutual desire to take closer steps toward one other to put pressure on Israel.

If “the Palestinian movement is aware that the Syrian regime has zero credibility on the world stage and little room for maneuver, Syria could also serve as a refuge for Hamas leaders” amid the recent normalization, said Radwan Ziadeh, a researcher at the Arab Center in Washington. She added Damascus would have no role in potential future negotiations between Hamas and Israel.

In the eyes of the Syrian regime, normalization with Hamas also carries several advantages, as it “could help Assad restore his tarnished image by representing him as a defender of the Palestinian cause, despite the fact that his army destroyed the Palestinian refugee camps during the war,” said Lund.

Another objective for the regime would be to “create confusion and conflict among the Muslim Brotherhood-type Islamists, who constitute a significant part of the Syrian opposition in general and the Turkish-backed groups in particular,” the researcher said.

The Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas owes its roots, reportedly reacted strongly this summer to rumors of normalization with Assad, urging the Palestinian group to “reconsider its decision” to be more in line with the “principles, values and legal norms” of the Brotherhood movement.

This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Sahar Ghoussoub. 

Hamas announced Thursday the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Syrian government — a move that came much to the Syrian regime’s delight but dismayed the opposition to the Damascus regime.“Hamas confirms that it is going ahead with its decision to restore ties with the Syrian Arab Republic to serve the interests of the Arab and Islamic ummah [nation], and especially the Palestinian...