Hamas has, in recent months, appeared to be leaving Iran’s fold, but the truth may be that “appeared” is the operative word. The organization’s leader and co-founder, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, is in Tehran after having been in Cairo until the Gaza Strip violence began. It is being reported in the Jewish press that Hamas has switched allegiances. On the surface, this makes sense because Hamas is a Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood organization and Iran is a Shiite country. The only thing they hate worse than each other is Israel.
This information from Debka.com has been useful in understanding this: “After five days of non-stop missile fire on a dozen towns and villages, Israel Thursday night gave Egypt and Hamas two days to halt the shooting or else the IDF will go into action against Gaza. debkafile’s military sources report that neither Egypt nor Hamas can be expected to go up against the missile shooters because the attacks have now been taken over from Jihad Islami by a small group of Salafi Palestinians that belongs to Jalalat, an al Qaeda organization. Most of the missiles coming from the Salafi concentrations target the southern cities. Egypt and Hamas don’t know exactly who is giving Haraka the missiles, except that they are smuggled from Sinai through tunnels managed by Iranian intelligence agents in conjunction with local al Qaeda networks. It is highly unlikely that Hamas will venture to lay hands on these Salafi terrorists at a time when one of its top officials in Gaza, Mahmoud A-Zahar, is visiting Tehran for talks with Iranian leaders who are keen to keep the missile assaults going. His visit marks the Hamas fundamentalists’ return to the Iranian fold – that is if they ever really left it. Israeli strategists have chosen to ignore and are treating Hamas as a non-participant in the missile offensive and available to help Cairo bring the terrorists to accept a ceasefire, but the sequence of events leading up to this week’s violence points to the opposite conclusion and probably the reason for the escalation of the violence rather than a solid truce. Five days before the missile fire began, on March 5, a Hamas Deputy Politburo Chief Mousa Abu Marzouk and Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah met in Beirut and finalized tactics for building up tensions on Israel’s borders. Monday, March 12, Mahmoud A-Zahar was in Cairo to wind up Gaza ceasefire terms with Egyptian officials when, to their astonishment, instead of returning to Gaza, he boarded a plane to Tehran. He is still there. And so, while the Egyptians try and reach some sort of accommodation with Hamas for a truce, Hamas itself is in close communion with the Iranians, who want to see the Israeli military stuck in a messy a showdown with the Palestinian Salafis.”
WND reports that “Iran is paying off Hamas members to form independent militias to do Tehran’s bidding against Israel, according to WND. Iran has been paying off Hamas militia members to answer directly to Tehran instead of the Hamas leadership amid a stated decision by the Islamic group to stay out of any war between Iran and Israel. Now, Hamas sources say they have found at least seven high Hamas military officers bribed by Iran to work with Islamic Jihad and other Gazan groups to keep firing rockets at Israel during any confrontation between the Jewish state and Iran. Hamas has been probing whether Iran is planning a coup d’état against it but has only found information about the bribes. Egyptian intelligence officials have been mediating between Israel and Hamas in an attempt to restore calm on the Israel-Gaza border. Egyptian officials involved in the talks say that Hamas has been trying to halt the rocket-fire coming from Iranian-sponsored Gazan groups, including Islamic Jihad.The Egyptian officials say Hamas asked them to press Islamic Jihad to agree to a cease-fire. The sources complain that Iran has been pressuring Islamic Jihad to escalate the rocket attacks.”
This latest round of Gaza violence has the stink of some kind of intervention all over it. The US wants a war with Iran. Is the US using intelligence about the shifting allegiances in the Middle East to get its war while, simultaneously, Tehran is doing its own manipulation? Netanyahu repeatedly has said this week that this round of Gaza violence is a run-up to a war with Iran. That Netanyahu reportedly got a green light from Obama to defend itself in Gaza is a huge clue the US is somehow involved. There seems to be more going on here than can be easily deciphered.
We usually only gain true understanding of these things after the fact. We must keep watching and praying because there is something strange going on right now. It may be that we are about to see Syria and Iran sweep into Israel over this latest round of fighting, thus fulfilling prophecy.
