Hamas leader recounts how Soleimani handed him cash-filled suitcases
A top Hamas official revealed details about one batch of Iran’s financial assistance to his group, when slain commander Qasem Soleimani handed his delegation suitcases stuffed with millions of dollars.
![107613945 Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar speaks during an interview with AFP at his house in Gaza City on December 15, 2010. The Arab League meeting on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process was nothing more than "a cover for the failure" of the Palestinian Authority, Zahar said. AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMS (Photo credit should read MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)](/sites/default/files/styles/article_hero_medium/public/almpics/2020/12/GettyImages-107613945.jpg/GettyImages-107613945.jpg?h=a5ae579a&itok=vDOkjy70)
A senior leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement has offered an account of how in one tranche of cash aid, the Islamic Republic provided his group with $22 million back in 2006.
In an interview with the state-funded Arabic-language news network Al-Alam, Mahmoud al-Zahar said during a visit to Tehran as Gaza’s foreign minister, he and eight other members of his delegation received the nine suitcases before departure from an airport in Tehran. “In the meeting, I raised with him our problems with salary payments and social services in Gaza,” al-Zahar said of his discussions with the former commander of Iran’s Quds Force who was killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad Jan. 3.