Yesterday evening, Wednesday, the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar al-Assad, accused the “Hamas” movement of adopting a “treacherous” position regarding the events that took place in his country in its first days in 2011.
Al-Assad said in an interview with Sky News Arabia, that Syria did not ask Hamas to protect it, as some leaders of the movement said at the time, and said: “How can they stand with us, and how can they protect the Syrian country, when they have no army, and there are several dozen of them. ” in Syria”.
He vehemently denied that Syria asked Hamas to protect it, referring to statements attributed to the movement’s leaders in 2012 that the Bashar al-Assad regime sought Hamas’ help in fighting the Syrians who rebelled against the regime, but the movement preferred to side with the peoples who rebelled against some of their systems at the time.
Al-Assad said of that position: “We declared it more than once that it was a position of treason, not because we stood by it, but because it was a claim to resistance at the time, and I’m talking about the leaders, I’m not talking about all of Hamas, because I don’t know the All of Hamas, who claimed to stand with the same resistance that carried the flag of the French occupation in Syria, so how can a person who claims resistance stand against an occupation that resulted from American and Turkish occupation and Israeli aggression under the flag of a French occupier?
Al-Assad implicitly meant the head of the political bureau of the “Hamas” movement, Ismail Haniyeh, as well as the former Khaled Mashal, after they appeared in video clips carrying on two different occasions the flag adopted by the Syrian opposition. which Al-Assad describes as “the flag of the French occupation”.
Al-Assad added in an interview yesterday: “This position is a mixture of treachery and hypocrisy.” as described.
Regarding relations with Hamas after its leaders’ visit to Damascus, al-Assad said: “Our relationship today is a relationship within the framework of the general principle. We stand with any Palestinian party that stands against Israel to restore its rights. This is a general principle.”
In response to the question of whether this relationship will return to what it was in the past, he said: “No, at the moment it does not have offices in Syria and it is too early to talk about such a thing. We have priorities now, and the battles inside Syria are our top priority.”