Damascus - (AFP) - A delegation from the Hamas movement arrived in Syria on Wednesday, according to an official in a Palestinian faction, told Agence France-Presse, on a visit that is the first since it severed its relations with Damascus more than ten years ago, following the outbreak of conflict in the country.

Hamas was considered one of the closest Palestinian allies of President Bashar al-Assad. And it made Damascus its headquarters abroad for years, before it criticized the authorities’ suppression of the protests that swept the country starting in mid-March 2011, and the relationship between the two parties was severed.

"The Hamas delegation arrived in Damascus for a two-day visit," the Secretary-General of the Popular Struggle Front, Khaled Abdel Majeed, told AFP. The visit included meetings with Palestinian faction leaders and Syrian officials, led by Assad.

The Hamas delegation, headed by the head of the Arab and Islamic Relations Bureau, Khalil al-Hayyah, will meet al-Assad on Wednesday noon, as part of a delegation that includes representatives of the Palestinian factions. Their representatives will hold a press conference after the meeting.

The Hamas delegation arrived in Beirut on Tuesday night, coming from Algeria, where the Palestinian factions signed a reconciliation agreement on Thursday, under which they commit to holding legislative and presidential elections within a year.

Hamas' visit to Damascus comes after its leadership announced last month its desire to resume relations with Damascus, in light of the "accelerating regional and international developments surrounding our cause and our nation," which analysts considered a sign of a number of Arab countries normalizing their relations with Israel.

Following the outbreak of the conflict in Syria, relations gradually soured between the two parties until the movement's leaders, headed by the former head of its political bureau abroad, Khaled Meshaal, left Damascus in February 2012. The movement closed all its offices and stopped its activities there.

For years, Syrian officials considered Hamas's departure a "severe blow" to the relationship with Syria, and some of them described it as "treason."

The visit to Damascus, according to what an official in the movement told AFP earlier, was preceded by meetings with Syrian officials, mediated by the Lebanese Hezbollah and its Iranian backer.

The movement maintained a good relationship with Hezbollah. Despite his disagreement with her over her position on Damascus, he has always considered it part of the "axis of resistance," which also includes Damascus, Tehran, and Iraqi factions.
A leader in the movement told AFP earlier that Hamas is going to open an office in Damascus, but it is "too early to talk" about returning the movement's headquarters to Damascus, as was the case previously.
In 2017, Hamas announced its disengagement from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned in Syria since the 1980s and is one of the most prominent components of the Syrian opposition following the outbreak of the conflict.