Recently, Iraqi national leader Iyad Allawi claimed that Israeli intelligence apparatuses provided the U.S. with images showing launching pads in Gaza for ballistic missiles aimed at Arab Gulf states.

All Gaza-based resistance factions strongly condemned claims by Iyad Wallwi, who is head of the National Coalition party of Iraq, on Thursday, May 16 that the armed factions in Gaza have erected launching pads for ballistic missiles, aimed at some Arab Gulf states.

A statement, issued by the Palestinian groups, refuted vehemently Allawi’s allegations, calling on the Iraqi government to put an end to what the factions termed as merely lies, aimed at backing “Zionist-American vicious plans for the Palestinian people and their resistance factions.”

The statement accused Allawi of attempting to destabilize Palestinian-Arab relations, in a time the Palestinian cause is facing U.S. and Israeli threats intended at undermining nationalist Palestinian aspirations.

Recent Background of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

The Gaza Strip, home to 2 million residents, 1.2 million of whom are refugees, has been going through dire economic circumstances, caused by an ongoing Israeli blockade and internal division between the ruling Islamist Hamas party and the Fatah party of Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

During the past 10 years, Israel has carried out three major military attacks on Gaza which Israel says was in response to homemade rocket fire from Gaza into nearby Israeli towns. Recently, the Israeli army launched a two-day attack, the deadliest since 2014 on the coastal region after rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Since Egypt’s military overthrew an Islamist elected president, Mohammad Morsi in 2013, Egypt and other Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, have outlawed the Islamic Brotherhood, to which Hamas and Egypt’s deposed president belong.

Hamas has repeatedly emphasized what it considers a fact that the party’s resistance actions are aimed at what they believe is the Israeli occupation only and that it never interferes in the affairs of any Arab country.

Hamas’s emphasis comes against the backdrop of Egyptian media accusations that Hamas has helped fuel violence in the Egyptian Sinai peninsula, where terrorist Islamist groups operate against the Egyptian troops.

During a regular Arab League summit meeting this March, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas blamed Hamas for the failure of Palestinian national unity. In October 2017 Abbas and Hamas signed in Cairo a unity deal, the last among a series of deals, signed since 2007, when the internationally backed Palestinian president outlawed Hamas.