For the first time, a Shiite Islamist movement has been operating in the Gaza Strip with full Iranian sponsorship, The Times of Israel has learned. The movement is named “A-Sabrin” — from the Arabic word for patience.

A-Sabrin runs several Shiite charity organizations, which benefit from full Iranian support and encourage the spread of Shiite Islam.

The presence of such a movement in the Gaza Strip is unheard-of, as is the fact that the Sunni Hamas movement – apparently due to the financial support it receives from Shiite Iran — has been tolerating its presence.

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Still, the number of Palestinian Muslims, the vast majority of whom are Sunnis, to convert has been limited. (While there have been Sunni families from Bethlehem in the West Bank who converted to Shiite Islam, it a highly unusual occurrence in the Strip.)

The Times of Israel has obtained photographs documenting the charitable works of some of A-Sabrin’s organizations. Signs hanging in the background clearly show the name of Iran’s late supreme leader, ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and reference the 1979 Islamic Revolution. One of the signs reads, “Congratulations to the Iran-Jerusalem axis.”

The leader of A-Sabrin is Hisham Salem, who founded it last year. Recently his supporters distributed a message to various media outlets in which he condemned the Saudi attacks in Yemen as well as criticizing Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Such proclamations put Hamas in a problematic situation vis-à-vis Sunni countries, since A-Sabrin, which is permitted by Hamas to operate in Gaza, explicitly supported the Shiite Houthi rebels who are being targeted by a Saudi-led Arab coalition.

Over the past two weeks, the charitable organizations’ offices have been targeted in radical Sunni attacks, most of them by groups affiliated with Hamas’s rival, the Salafists. Hamas, meanwhile, has cracked down on Salafist groups and arrested dozens of their members in the past few weeks.

The A-Sabrin movement’s flag is nearly identical to that of the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah, though it has a different color scheme. Jama’it Ansar A-Sajin, Jama’it Beka’i’at A-Salacha and Dar Al-Hoda are just some of the Shiite charity organizations operating in the Strip with no opposition from Hamas.

According to Palestinian sources, Iran has continued to pump money into Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas’s military branch, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Thus, while Hamas has been unable to pay most of its members their normal wages due to monetary issues within the organization, it has been paying the salaries of its military personnel.