For years Israel has blamed Syria for training terrorist recruits and creating a safe haven for terrorists. All the while Syria has denied this. A captured Hamas recruit has now confessed he was trained in, you guessed it, Syria.

ASHKELON, Israel - A 20-year-old Palestinian recruited from a mosque in Gaza by Hamas militants told The Associated Press in a jailhouse interview Tuesday that he received weeks of military training in a Hamas camp in Syria this year.

The allegations by Osama Mattar, now in Israeli custody, mark the first time a Palestinian has spoken publicly about being trained in Syria, and contradict repeated Syrian denials.

The training base outside Damascus was far from secret and was once even inspected by Syrian intelligence agents, Mattar said.

“They know very well about the presence of Hamas,” he said. “What they may not have known about was the presence of a guy from Gaza coming to train at the training camp in Syria.”

Of course they know the presence of Hamas just as Syria knows the presence of terrorists infiltrating Iraq. A huge portion of the foreign born terrorists fighting against the Coalition and killing innocent Iraqis trained in Syria and entered Iraq through Syria despite the country’s constant denials and outward statements saying Syria is against the terrorists.

One of Syria’s closest allies, if not their only ally, is Iran which is also a state sponsor of terrorism and specifically funds Hezbollah. Hezbollah attacks Israeli civilians as well as has a firm grip on Lebanon, the country in which Syria claims they will withdraw from finally.