Nasrallah is pushing for Hamas reconciliation with Syria and Iran

Jerusalem Post

Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah is reportedly mediating between Hamas on the one hand and Iran and Syria on the other in order to patch up the alliance that has been damaged due to the war in Syria.

The reconciliation efforts were reported on Saturday in the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir.

According to a senior official, Nasrallah is playing a key role in the mediation effort which is also being encouraged by Tehran, that is planning to invite Hamas Political Bureau Chief Khaled Mashaal to the Iranian capital.

Possible signs of the mediation could also be seen from Gaza, where in a ceremony earlier this month marking 27 years since the founding of the Islamist movement, Abu Ubaida the spokesman for the Kassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, recognized Iran's role in supporting the Palestinian resistance.

Hamas has urged Hezbollah to withdraw its forces from Syria, where they are battling for Syrian President Bashar Assad, and focus on fighting Israel instead. Iran is Syria and Hezbollah's strongest regional ally.

The Islamist group which controls the Gaza Strip, was once an Assad ally, but in 2012 it endorsed the revolt against him in a shift that at the time deprived the Syrian leader of an important Sunni Muslim supporter in the Arab world.

"We call on Hezbollah to take its forces out of Syria and to keep their weapons directed against the Zionist enemy," Moussa Abu Marzouk, a Cairo-based Hamas leader, said on his Facebook page last year.

Before the rift overt the war in Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, were two long-time allies who have each fought against Israel and advocate its destruction.

Hamas's leaders in exile were once based in Damascus but left, mainly for Egypt and Qatar, in 2012 as the civil war escalated.

Reuters contributed to this report.