Hamas's Iranian puppeteer

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
28 October '10

For those who so naively believe that the way to defuse the Islamist threat to the world is first to solve the Israel/Palestinian conflict, further evidence – not that anyone who has eyes to see actually needs it – of the way in which the Palestinians are themselves being controlled by the forces of the jihad. For the third time, Iranian arms destined for Hamas in Gaza to attack Israel have been intercepted, this time in Nigeria. Ha’aretz reports:

Nigeria's secret service said on Tuesday it had intercepted 13 containers of weapons from Iran in what Israeli defense sources believe may be part of a new smuggling route from Iran to Hamas in Gaza. Rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives camouflaged as building material were seized in the Nigerian port of Lagos after being unloaded from an Iranian ship.

So many in the West – including, I suspect, those who are not hostile to Israel, merely indifferent – fail to grasp that a key reason for the Israel/Arab impasse is that the Palestinian side has always been controlled by state actors pulling its strings. The current chief puppeteer is Iran, assisted by its ally in infamy, Syria. This is even more striking since Hamas, who are Sunni Muslims, are in cahoots with Shia Iran, theologically their sworn enemies.

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