Sunni-Shi’ite jihad continuing to heat up.
“‘Hamas rejects Iran offer of funding in return for backing in Saudi row,’” by Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel, January 15, 2016:
Hamas has rejected a proposal by Tehran to restore ties in return for its support in Iran’s current battle with Saudi Arabia, a source in the Palestinian terror group told pan-Arab paper Asharq al-Awsat on Friday.
According to the report, Khaled Qaddumi, Hamas’ representative in Tehran, met two weeks ago with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javed Zarif, who offered to renew Iranian financial support for the group on a regular basis and according to its needs, if Hamas were to officially declare its allegiance to Iran over Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr earlier this month.
According to the sources, the proposal triggered a dispute within Hamas. The heads of the organization in the Gaza Strip supported normalization of ties with Tehran, while Qatar-based politburo chief Khaled Mashaal was reluctant to commit, fearing that Hamas would lose its support among Sunni Arab states. As such, the report says, Mashaal officially rejected the offer from Iran.
“The equation is clear: as a liberation movement, we need the support of everyone,” a Hamas official in the West Bank told the newspaper. He stressed the group “will never join an alliance against the Sunni world.”
Relations between Iran and Hamas have been shaky since the Palestinian organization came out against Syrian President Bashar Assad, a key Iranian ally, and left its headquarters in Damascus with the outbreak of the country’s civil war in 2011….