Hamas has opened an official office in Tunisia, a spokesman said Sunday.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, one of the Iran-backed terror group’s top officials, publicly announced the opening to a Tunisian news agency on Sunday. Abu Marzouk said that the office was opened with full approval of the Tunisian government. Tunisia is ruled by the Islamist Ennahdda movement, though the party recently ditched the word “Islamist” from its name.

Israel and Tunisia maintained representative offices in each other’s countries from 1994-2000. Tunisia closed its Tel Aviv office in 2000 due to the second intifada. In 2011, a visit to Tunis by then-Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh raised speculation that Hamas might open an office in the north African nation, which had been home the PLO from 1983 to 1994.

Hamas currently is preparing for a renewed conflict with Israel. It routinely attempts to smuggle materials into Gaza that can be used to manufacture rockets and other weapons. This May, Israeli authorities uncovered a shipment of four tons of ammonium chloride concealed in over 30 tons of salt. The compound can be employed both as a fertilizer and in the production of rockets. The Israel Tax Authority stated that those four tons could have been used to make hundreds of long-range rockets. “This case underscores the activity of Gaza-based terrorist organizations in smuggling dual-use materials disguised as goods destined for the civilian population and reconstruction projects,” the authority concluded.

Later that month, Israel intercepted another shipment of materials that could be used in the construction of rockets and terror tunnels.

Israeli Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold announced in May that Hamas is confiscating 95% of cement that enters Gaza. “From our own investigations we found that out of every 100 sacks of cement that come into the Gaza Strip [from Israel], only five or six are transferred to civilians,” he stated. Hamas uses the cement to build and expand its network of tunnels.

The IDF uncovered two Hamas tunnels that breached Israeli territory in the spring. Hamas used its network of tunnels during the 2014 war to infiltrate into Israel and has continued its efforts to rebuild and expand its infrastructure. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, formerly the head of the research division of Israeli military intelligence and later the director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, told reporters in May that the discovery of the tunnels was a sign that Hamas was preparing for another war against Israel. He added that the tunnel digging means that “they definitely invest a lot in making the necessary preparations so that in the next round, when they decide to start it, they will be able to inflict the heaviest damage on Israel, including through those tunnels.”

[Photo: Mohammed Al-Ostaz / Flash 90 ]