Iran Threatening To Cut Hamas Funds, Arms Supply If It Flees Syria

Haaretz ^ | 5 Dec 2011 | Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel

[edpc]

Iran had applied intense pressure to Hamas in an effort to persuade it not to leave Damascus, threatening even to cut off funds to the organization if it did so, Palestinian sources have told Haaretz.

The Iranian pressure also included an unprecedented ultimatum - namely, an explicit threat to stop supplying Hamas with arms and suspend the training of its military activists.

[edpc]

Haaretz has learned that Hamas has made a decision to abandon Damascus without letting the Syrian authorities know. The decision was made by the organization's senior leadership in the wake of the harsh criticism voiced against top Hamas officials in Gaza and abroad because of their ties with the Syrian regime.

You know you're nearing rock bottom when Hamas considers abandoning you.

[Pollster1]

. . . suspend the training of its military activists . . .

Is that the new term for terrorists? "Military activists" are thugs who murder children in schools and on school buses, who blow up families at the market, and who kidnap innocents. It's disgusting that anyone would use a superficially neutral euphemism for evil.

[edpc]

I guess their suicide bombers are “scrap metal distributors.”

[mitch5501]

"...effort to persuade it not to leave Damascus..."

Why,are they losing faith in the promise of 72 virgins?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks edpc.

Hamas Removing Staff From Syria [’following pressure from Turkey and Qatar’]
by Joshua Mitnick
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204083204577082471358870022.html

Hamas denies reports leaders fled Syria
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=248216

Syrian opposition woos support by pledges to sever ties with “terrorist groups” [incl. Hamas]
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-12/05/c_131289277.htm

[SJackson]

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[rmlew]

Not at all. Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, was borne of of the Muslim Brotherhood. The oppositon to the Alawite-dominated Ba'athist regime in Syria comes not just from facebook Liberals, but from the Muslim Brotherhood. The MB does not fear Bashar Assad as they did his father Hafez Assad, who massacred thousands at Hama. Hamas must decide between its Iranian and Syrian benefactors and its ideological allies and parents in the Muslim Brotherhood.

[mitch5501]

I was thinking along the lines of Damascus becoming a ruinous heap (as in Biblical prophecy) therefore anyone who stayed there would be certain to die.Any jihadi keen for his trip to paradise should be clamoring to get to Damascus.