Hamas ditches Assad, backs Syrian revolt
Published Friday 24/02/2012 (updated) 25/02/2012 15:07
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=462913

CAIRO (Reuters) -- Leaders of Hamas turned publicly against their long-time
ally President Bashar 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 and deepens his international isolation. 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 as Assad's army,
largely led by fellow members of the president's Alawite sect, has crushed
mainly Sunni protesters and rebels.

In a Middle East split along sectarian lines, the 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 Shiite allies in Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.

"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," Hamas leader
Ismail Haniyeh, visiting Egypt from the Gaza Strip, told thousands of Friday
worshipers at Cairo's al-Azhar mosque.

"We are marching towards Syria, with millions of martyrs," chanted
worshipers at al-Azhar, home to one of the Sunni world's highest seats of
learning. "No Hezbollah and no Iran.

"The Syrian revolution is an Arab revolution."

Contemporary political rivalries have exacerbated tensions that date back
centuries between Sunnis -- the vast majority of Arabs -- and Shiites, who
form substantial Arab populations, notably in Lebanon and Iraq, and who
dominate in non-Arab Iran.

Hamas and Hezbollah, confronting Israel on its southwestern and northern
borders, have long had a strategic alliance, despite opposing positions on
the sectarian divide. Both have fought wars with Israel in the past six
years.

But as the Sunni-Shiite split in the Middle East deepens, Hamas appears to
have cast its lot with the powerful, Egypt-based Sunni Islamists of the
Muslim Brotherhood, whose star has been in the ascendant since the Arab
Spring revolts last year.

Hamas makes its choice

"This is considered a big step in the direction of cutting ties with Syria,"
said Hany al-Masri, a Palestinian political commentator. Damascus might now
opt to formally expel Hamas's exile headquarters from Syria, he said.

Banned by deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood has
moved to the center of public life. It is the ideological parent of Hamas,
which was founded 25 years ago among the Palestinians, the majority of whom
are Sunni Muslims.

Shiite Hezbollah still supports the Assad family, from the minority Alawite
sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, which has maintained authoritarian rule
over Syria's Sunni majority for four decades but now may have its back to
the wall.

Hamas, however, has been deeply embarrassed among Palestinians by its
association with Assad, as the death toll in his crackdown on opponents has
risen into the thousands.

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."

"The hearts of the Palestinian people bleed with every drop of bloodshed in
Syria," Bardaweel said. "No political considerations will make us turn a
blind eye to what is happening on the soil of Syria."

Anti-Israel axis weakened

The divorce between Hamas and Damascus had been coming for months. The
Palestinian group had angered Assad last year when it refused a request to
hold public rallies in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria in support of his
government.

Hamas's exile political leader 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.

"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," said
Bardaweel.

"God is Greatest," the crowd chanted. "Victory to the people of Syria."

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.

Anything that divides Hamas and Hezbollah is likely to be welcomed by
Israel, which has been watching warily recent moves by Hamas to reconcile
differences with its Palestinian rivals in Fatah, the movement of President
Mahmoud Abbas.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on Friday's speeches.