The new leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar stated that,  ‘The relationship today is developing and returning to what it was in the old days”,  adding that this will be reflected in the resistance against Israel now that Tehran is again is Hamas’s biggest backer after years of tension over the civil war in Syria.

Yahya Sinwar also told reporters that “Relations with Iran are excellent and Iran is the largest supporter of the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades with money and arms” referring to Hamas’s armed wing.

Negotiation about how far will Tehran support Hamas  have not been disclosed yet. However, regional diplomats said  that Iran’s financial aid for the Islamist movement was dramatically reduced in recent years and directed to the Qassam Brigades rather than to Hamas’s political institutions. One of the reasons for their tension was because Hamas refused to support Iran’s ally Syrian President Bashar Assad in the six-year-old war in Syria.

Sinwar, a former Hamas security chief who had spent 20 years in Israeli jails, said the group is always preparing for a possible war with Israel. But he said such a conflict was not in Hamas’s strategic interests at the moment. “we do not want war and we want to push it backward as much as we could so that our people will relax and take their breath and in the same time we are building our power,” he said. “We do not fear war and we are fully ready for it.” Hamas has fought three wars with Israel since seizing the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, are locked in political dispute over the issue of Palestinian unity.Abbas’s  cut for funding of Israeli-supplied electricity to Gaza has led to prolonged daily blackouts in the the Gaza Strip

Sinwar, in his remarks, invited Abbas’s Fatah movement for talks about a united forming government to administer both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. On his side Abbas has called on Hamas to first relinquish control of Gaza before he removes economic sanctions and to prepare for the formation of a new unity government that will be tasked with holding presidential and parliamentary elections.

Source: PNN