The Iranian press maintains that Hamas Political Bureau Chief and Khaled Meshaal spoke from Damascus, Syria last week, coming to the defense of his terror group’s love for Iran (continued below)

Arab and Islamic countries should consolidate their unity and distinguish friend from foe, he said while addressing a ceremony held in the Syrian capital, Damascus, to commemorate the demise anniversary of the Founder of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the late Imam Khomeni.

Iran has long-standing relationship with Hamas, providing the terrorist group with military and guerilla warfare training, a steady supply of weapons, as well as financial support.

Retired U.S. diplomats who are member of a vehemently anti-Israel lobbying group on Washington, D.C. met with Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya in the Gaza Strip today.


The anti-Israel lobby, Council for the National Interest (CNI), included Richard Viets, a retired former number two U.S. diplomat in Israel in its contingent. Viets was also U.S. ambassador to Jordan in the early 1980s.

The ‘meeting’ is nothing more than a public relations stint by Hamas’ Haniyah, a man who once called a Hamas suicide attack that killed 9 civilians in Tel Aviv “an act of self-defense.”

Did the INC tell Hamas to free Israel’s Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped Israel soldier who was taken by Hamas while on guard duty inside Israel? Did it denounce Hamas’ terror, weapons, and financial ties to Iran?

Don’t bet on it. Viets was quoted as saying that the anti-Israel group went to Gaza to “educat[e] ourselves better about the situation here in order to return home and to explain to our countrymen the reaction and the views of what we heard.” In other words, to act as P.R. spokesmen for a group which has remained on the U.S. State Department’s list of designated terrorist groups for years.

Egyptian security forces seized a cache of heavy weapons in mountains roughly 48 miles south of Rafah the Gaza strip.

One report said that 30 anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank weapons, 3,000 bullets and rifles were confiscated, but that no suspects were caught.

Hamas’ weapons smuggling operations continue from Egypt into Gaza. The weapons, training, and support continues to come from Iran.

Given that Israel told Egypt that it’s Arab neighbor must halt smuggling of weapons and other materials into Gaza as a pre-condition to any possible ceasefire with Hamas, this incident should not come as a surprise.

Egyptian sources said that the mountain region where the weapons where discovered was also used by terrorist groups charged with the 2004 and 2005 bombings of Egyptian resorts in Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh.

On Sunday, a Lebanese newspaper quoted a high ranking Egyptian security source who discussed restoring security to the Gaza’s wild, wild west-styled Rafah border crossing.


According to Al Akhbar, the Egyptian security official said that there was “full agreement between Israelis and Palestinians on the Egyptian vision of calm in the Gaza Strip.” That claim only appears credible if the Palestinians alleged to be in “full agreement” were aligned with Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority.

This Hamas gunman inside a Rafah border crossing security checkpoint shows the true meaning of the terrorist group’s intentions:

Real security along Gaza’s border with Egypt would mean an iron-clad halt to the arms smuggling supplied by Iran, Syria, and others to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

The smuggling continues, and with it, daily terror attacks with Hamas rockets against Israeli civilians.

The Egyptians can and must do more to stop this weapons smuggling.

Photo credit: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa, Reuters