Does partaking in mass killing, raping and hostage-taking make one a terrorist? Hamas isn’t so sure. In a mind-boggling development, it transpires that the Palestinian Islamist group is employing lawyers to fight its designation as a proscribed terrorist group by the UK government. Instead, it argues, Hamas is a ‘Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project’. That’s certainly one way to reframe the atrocities it has committed…
Twenty years after Hamas’ military wing was proscribed in the UK, its political wing – which runs Gaza – was also proscribed in 2021, making it a criminal offence to express support for it. At the time, the UK government labelled the divide between the two groups as ‘artifical’, slamming the movement as a ‘complex but single terrorist organisation’. Protesting the illegality of his group in Britain, Hamas’ international relations chief Mousa Abu Marzouk has now submitted the organisation’s claim to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, stating that:
The British government’s decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century.
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