Hamas, Hezbollah Take Opposite Sides in Syria
Hamas and Hezbollah leaders find themselves on opposite sides of the war in Syria, writes Shlomi Eldar.
Oh, how the wheel turns!
Just a little more than a year ago, the political bureau of Hamas was situated in Damascus. The organization’s leaders enjoyed the protective patronage of the Syrian regime and aid from their step-brother, Hezbollah. These two organizations were deemed the “darlings” of President Hafez Assad, the father, who left them to his son Bashar as a legacy.
But there is sentiment, and then there is reality. By late December 2011, when the uprising started shifting into high gear, Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau Khaled Meshaal decided that the time had come to unravel the old alliance with Damascus, and to find some other safe haven for himself, his family, and his senior staffers.
Meshaal is no stranger to the idea of moving homes. Right after the Six Day War, when he was still a boy, his family picked up from the village of Silwad, where he was born (in 1956), right outside of Ramallah, and moved to the Hashemite capital of Amman. Then, to support itself, the Meshaal family was forced to move to Kuwait, only to be expelled in disgrace, along with all the other Palestinians, after the first Gulf War [1990-1991].
