Tensions Rise as Hamas Refuses to Take Sides in Syria

Al Hayat, the London-based pan-Arab newspaper, reported Saturday that Hamas’s political wing was decamping to Doha, the capital of Qatar, but Hamas officials in Syria and beyond it denied it. Similar reports circulated on Monday and denials were again issued.

But Hamas officials acknowledged in a series of interviews that relations with Syrian officials have been tense.

“The Syrian government said to us, ‘Whoever is not with us is against us,’ ” said a senior Hamas official at a Palestinian camp near Damascus. “It wants us to express clearly our position over what is going on in Syria. It wants us to be against the Syrian demonstrations. We told them we are neutral. We said to them we are living in the country as visitors and we have no right to comment or interfere in the country’s problems.”

Since March, antigovernment protests inspired by similar events across the Arab world have broken out across Syria, with about 500 demonstrators killed by security forces.

Salah Bardawil, a Hamas official in Gaza, said Hamas “cannot support a party against another party in an Arab country,” adding, “The Syrian leadership and other leaderships should understand Hamas’s strategic principle not to intervene in the internal affairs of the states.”