Experts: Hamas and Hezbollah are tightening their alliance against Israel

Situation in Israel is very tense right now. The Jewish holiday of Passover and the holy month of Ramadan are underway. On Wednesday, Israeli police clashed twice with Muslim worshipers at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The escalation of violence resulted in exchanges of fire in the Gaza Strip and fueled fears of further unrest, and on 6 April there was an exceptionally heavy rocket fire on Israel from inside Lebanonwhich was met with Israeli retaliation.

On Sunday, Lebanese Hezbollah leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah met in Beirut with a Hamas delegation led by Ismail Haniyeh. The leaders of the two organizations met in the Lebanese capital to discuss the “readiness of the resistance axis” against Israel, “the intensification of resistance in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” and “the events at the Al-Aqsa mosque,” the Hezbollah leader said on Sunday. The “axis of resistance” refers to Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian and others supported by Iran anti-Israel groups.

The rapprochement between Hamas and Hezbollah points to a worrying new dimension to the decades-long conflict, experts quoted by The New York Times say.

Hamas, a Palestinian political and armed movement founded in 1987, has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, previously ruled by the mainstream Palestinian leadership. Since then, the organization has been in a state of conflict with Israel, periodically firing rockets from the Gaza Strip against cities in the south of the country. Hamas militants also resort to strictly terrorist methods, carrying out shootings and bombings in the occupied West Bank. Israel as well United Statestherefore recognizes Hamas as a terrorist organization.

According to the New York Times, Hamas is now accused of armed activity in yet another area – Hezbollah’s strongholds in southern Lebanon.

Hamas expressed satisfaction with Thursday’s rocket fire against Israel, although it has not officially claimed responsibility for it. Israel, however, had no doubt that it was Hamas, possibly in cooperation with another Palestinian organization Islamic Jihad, fired rockets from the vicinity of Tire in southern Lebanon. The region is home to thousands of Palestinians whose loved ones have fled there over the years in the aftermath of the wars Israel has fought since its founding in 1948.

Hamas’s alleged involvement in Thursday’s shelling reflects its strengthened ties to Hezbollah and its sponsor Iran, which oppose the existence of a Jewish state, the New York Times writes. The daily notes that the warming of relations between the Lebanese and Palestinian movements takes place after a period of cooling that occurred when both organizations supported opposing sides in the Syrian civil war (Hamas backed the Sunni rebels opposed to Assad, and Shi’ite Iran and Shi’ite Hezbollah sided with the Syrian government).

Last year, however, saw a breakthrough in Hamas’ relations with Damascus. Signs of repairing tarnished relationships were, among others, Sunday’s rocket attacks by Hamas from the Syrian region controlled by the regime in Damascus, to which Israel also returned fire.

Rocket fire from Lebanese and Syrian territory suggests that Hamas is trying to find a way to move the fighting front against Israel away from Gaza’s borders and thus avoid damaging its own stronghold. The conflict between Israel and Hamas over the past two decades has led to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and the death of thousands of Palestinians living there.

Experts quoted by The New York Times point out that in retaliation for the attack from Lebanon, Israel shelled both the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, but Israeli shells spared major urban centers and caused no casualties.

Hamas “wants to face Israel, but not in Gaza,” says Hugh Lovatt, an expert on Palestine at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a Berlin-based think tank, as quoted by the New York daily. In his opinion, cooperation with Hamas is also beneficial for Hezbollah, as it allows to increase the pressure on Israel, while avoiding more serious repressions against the forces of the Lebanese movement.

The New York Times writes that a senior Hamas official in Lebanon has denied that the organization has recently strengthened its presence in Lebanon, and Osama Hamdan, a long-time Hamas official in Lebanon, told the paper that Hamas’s relationship with Hezbollah has always been close.

“We’re fighting the same enemy,” Hamdan told The New York Times. – This relationship goes back more than 30 years and is based on mutual respect and resistance against the Zionist occupation. We feel that Hezbollah has always been on the side of the Palestinian people and our relations have always been good.

Experts and representatives of the Israeli authorities, however, are of a different opinion, claiming that Hamas has become closer to Hezbollah in recent years and has become more active in Lebanon. They point out that the process of “rapprochement” accelerated after the election of Saleh al-Arouri in October 2017 as deputy chairman of Hamas’ politburo.

The New York Times writes that Arouri has begun to forge ties with both Iran and Hezbollah. Immediately after taking office, he visited Tehran, where he met with the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. A few days later, he met with the head of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, with whom he discussed the shape of potential cooperation – reminds “NYT”, recalling the Palestinian media reports of the time.

Two anonymous intelligence officials told the U.S. Daily that Arouri began building up Hamas’ paramilitary infrastructure in Lebanon shortly thereafter, but it is unclear whether this was with Hezbollah’s knowledge and permission.

Imad Alsoos, an expert on Hamas at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, however, is of the opinion that getting too close to Hezbollah may not be to Hamas’s advantage. “They are very, very sensitive to using other countries’ land to carry out attacks. They think that if they get involved in the internal conflicts of these countries, it will mean the end of Hamas itself, he said.