Iron Dome intercepts rockets from Gaza. Credit: Nehemia Gershuni, www.NGPhoto.biz, CC-BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The political bureau chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has met with Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, in the Lebanese capital Beirut this week.
The two reportedly discussed the recent 11-day bout of fighting between Israel and Gaza-based terror groups led by Hamas, and how they might build on the experience of the latest round of violence.
“Nasrallah and Haniyeh affirmed the depth of the relationship between Hezbollah and Hamas, and its primary position in the axis of resistance”, according to the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen.
The meeting was part of a series of high-level meetings for Haniyeh around the Arab world.
The Hamas chief also visited Morocco and Mauritania before heading to Lebanon. He last met with Nasrallah in September 2020.
On Sunday, Haniyeh also met with Lebanese president Michel Aoun, who is broadly seen as being aligned with Hezbollah.
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, has said that the terror group had coordinated with Hezbollah as well as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps throughout the conflict last month.
He also said there was “full coordination between the resistance in Lebanon and resistance in Gaza”. This is thought to be a reference to several rockets fired at Israel from Lebanon during the conflict.
The IDF has blamed several of the rocket attacks from Lebanon on Palestinian factions in the country, not the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group.