‘Hamas deemed a terrorist organization,’ hopes Patel

The legislation, set to be publicly revealed today in Washington DC, comes as part of a recent push to tackle anti-Semitism, and will act as a stepping stone to develop greater relations with Israel, and the UK’s Jewish community. “Hamas is fundamentally and rabidly anti-Semitic,” Priti Patel told reporters on Thursday.

Hamas, the Palestinian organization and de facto governing body of the Gaza Strip, was previously labelled a terrorist organization by Canada, the United States, Japan, Israel and the European Union.

The British government had already deemed it’s military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, as a terrorist organization, but now, Hamas itself will be listed under Britain’s Terrorism Act, meaning that any and all support for the organization will be illegal and prosecutable.

Aref Qasem, a Palestinian nationalist studying and living in the UK, argues, “The UK government has no right to decide who Palestinians should and shouldn’t support as our leader.”

The reason for legislation against the organization stems from Hamas’ own charter, written in 1988, and it’s subsequent revisional charter published in 2017.

The new charter states that Hamas, and it’s supporters, will not stop until all of Palestine has been liberated and the ‘Zionist enemy’ has been defeated. However, the charter also states that it does not intend to seek violence against the Jewish people, but rather Zionism as an ideology.

Mr Qasem contests this, “Under UN law, Hamas is actually not doing anything wrong because they’re under an occupying force so they’re provided with the right to fight against it by any means necessary as laid out in the UN charter.”

Laid out by the General Assembly of the United Nations, resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960 states that “all peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”