In Gaza, Iran finds a closer ally than Hamas

Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip: The oil, sugar, pasta and other staples looked innocuous enough as dozens of young Palestinian volunteers, sweating in the heat at a warehouse here, packed them into cartons destined for Gaza’s poor during the holy month of Ramadan.

But in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, the Islamic militant group, almost everything has a political flavour.

The food boxes bore the logo of Islamic Jihad and the Iranian flag alongside the Palestinian one. Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed extremist militant group, often challenges the larger Hamas.

Organisers at the packaging centre said that the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, a Beirut-based Iranian charity, was financing the $2 million (Dh7.3 million) food aid project. Islamic Jihad has been granted the honour of distributing the 40,000 parcels, giving it a boost at a delicate time when Hamas is struggling to cope with a shifting regional landscape.

In recent months, Iran has suspended millions of dollars in monthly aid to Hamas because the group did not stand by President Bashar Al Assad of Syria, its former patron, in his struggle against rebel forces. Unlike Hamas, Islamic Jihad did not leave its base in Damascus and has kept up relations with the government of Al Assad, a longtime Iranian ally.

Mkhaimar Abu Sada, a political science professor at Al Azhar University in Gaza, said the food relief served as an Iranian reminder to Hamas that Iran was its only reliable backer.

“The aid also aims to support Islamic Jihad as a resistance movement in the face of Israel,” Abu Sada added.

Hamas has also been suffering from the turmoil in neighbouring Egypt. As the Egyptian military has stepped up its campaign against Islamic militants in the Sinai Peninsula, which borders Gaza, it has destroyed or closed most of the lucrative smuggling tunnels that run beneath the Egypt-Gaza border, depriving Hamas of significant tax revenue.

There are signs that Hamas is now trying to mend its relations with Iran. This week Hamas joined other groups at a meeting in an Islamic Jihad office in Gaza to help plan activities for International Quds Day, a day of solidarity with occupied Jerusalem that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini instituted when he came to power in 1979 and which falls on the last Friday of Ramadan. In recent years only Islamic Jihad observed the event, with small demonstrations in Gaza.

In what was perhaps a gesture meant to lower tensions further, an Islamic Jihad official said that the group had allocated 3,000 Iranian-financed food packages to Hamas for distribution to needy families on its lists.

Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official in Gaza, said that additional food aid had become necessary in light of the Egyptian crackdown on the smuggling tunnels.

“In these difficult circumstances, the distribution of aid from the Islamic nation is a blessing,” he said.

Khaled Al Batsh, an Islamic Jihad official in Gaza, said it was the right of Palestinians in Gaza to get assistance from the Islamic Republic, just as they take aid from the United States.

For Um Anwar Saleh, 53, a widow and the mother of three from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, the aid was welcome regardless of where it had come from.

“Those who help us are better than those who don’t,” she said as she waved for a taxi to help her get the heavy carton home from the warehouse. “May Allah reward them.”