EU court removes Hamas from terror blacklist

Palestinian members of al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement (Reuters / Mohammed Salem)

December 17, 2014

The EU General Court has ordered that the Palestinian militant group Hamas be removed from the bloc’s terror blacklist. The move comes over four years after Hamas appealed its terror designation before the EU.

The European Union first banned Hamas’ military wing, the Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in 2002, though the organization’s social and political divisions were not put on the terror list. Following a series of Hamas suicide bombings during the second intifada or uprising in September 2003, the EU extended the ban to include the organization as a whole.

On September 12, 2010, Hamas appealed the ban, largely on procedural grounds. In its complaint, the group cited a lack of due process, specifically, that it had not been properly informed the act was being implemented. It further asserted that as a “legitimately-elected government,” it cannot be labeled as a terrorist organization, saying such a designation flies in the face of “the principle of non-interference in the internal matters of a State.”

READ MORE: ‘Amnesty are victims of Hamas propaganda’ – Israeli FM spokesman

The court accepted the organization’s argument, saying that the decision to remove Hamas from the list was not based on an examination of Hamas’ activities, but rather on an examination of the procedures used to institute the 2003 ban in the first place. Unless an appeal brings closure, however, a funding freeze against the group and sanctions against its members will remain in place for three more months.

Palestinian members of al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement (Reuters / Suhaib Salem)

The lawyer for Hamas, Liliane Glock, told AFP she was “satisfied with the decision.”

Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq lauded the decision, saying the court had righted an injustice done to the organization, which he said is a “national freedom movement,” and not a terrorist organization, the Jerusalem Post reports.

But a deputy from Israel’s major right-wing Likud party, Danny Danon, said, “The Europeans must believe that there blood is more sacred than the blood of the Jews which they see as unimportant. That is the only way to explain the EU court’s decision to remove Hamas from the terror blacklist.”

“In Europe they must have forgotten that Hamas kidnapped three boys and fired thousands of rockets last summer at Israeli citizens,” he added.

Shortly after the ruling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the EU to keep Hamas on its list of terrorist organizations.

“We expect them to immediately put Hamas back on the list,” Reuters cites Netanyahu as saying in a statement. “Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization which in its charter states its goal is to destroy Israel.”

The EU and Israel have attempted to downplay the ruling, saying that groups standing within Europe as terror organizations will not change. Israeli and European officials say the court will be given a few months to rebuild its file against Hamas with evidence of the group’s activities, which will enable it to be placed back on the list of terror organizations, the Israeli news portal Ynet reports.

According to RT’s Paula Slier, Israeli politicians “across the political spectrum” have unanimously condemned what they call a “temporary” removal.

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#Israeli politicians across the political spectrum have unanimously condemned this ‘temporary’ removal.
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According to Slier, EU officials have given Israel assurances that Brussels’ position has not changed, saying Wednesday’s ruling was a “technical” mistake. Officials from the 28-member bloc further said the court did not have sufficient authority to affect the entire EU’s position.

In the interim, however, EU member states will be empowered to establish diplomatic ties with Hamas.

A Palestinian boy wearing the headband of Hamas’s armed wing sits on the shoulders of his father during a rally ahead of the 27th anniversary of Hamas founding, in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip December 12, 2014 (Reuters / Mohammed Salem)

The EU ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, will meet with Israel’s Foreign Minister, Nissim Ben-Sheetrit, on Wednesday to discuss the matter, Israeli daily Haaretz reports. Faaborg-Andersen is expected to reiterate that the EU’s position on Hamas remains unchanged, and that a future decision to reclassify Hamas as a terror organization is forthcoming.

During the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, Hamas defeated the PLO-affiliated Fatah party and has governed the Gaza Strip for the past seven years. Some countries have treated Hamas as a terrorist organization, while others have not. While Australia, Canada, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Qatar, the US and the UK all treat Hamas or its military wing as a terrorist organization, other states, including China, Iran, Russia and Turkey, do not.

Hamas leaders have made several diplomatic trips to Russia to discuss a range of issues, from Palestinian reconciliation to economic relations.

U.N. Chief Offers Stark View of Gaza Devastation

 

 

JERUSALEM — Visiting Gaza on Tuesday for the first time since this summer’s 50-day war between Israel and Hamas, the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, said the destruction was “beyond description,” even as reconstruction efforts were underway for the first time.

“No amount of Security Council sessions, reports or briefings could have prepared me for what I witnessed today,” Mr. Ban told reporters after touring some of the most badly damaged areas of the Gaza Strip and visiting a United Nations school that was shelled during the fighting.

Perhaps anticipating the secretary general’s harsh assessment, Israel on Tuesday allowed a first delivery of building materials across the border into Gaza in a move to signal its support for the reconstruction effort and to deflect international criticism.

But that did little to soften Mr. Ban’s critique. “The build-destroy, build-destroy cycle must be broken,” he said. “The mindless pattern of blockade, rockets and destruction must stop.”

Mr. Ban’s visit to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, came after an international donor conference in Cairo on Sunday garnered $5.4 billion in pledges for the rehabilitation of the tiny coastal enclave, which has a population of some 1.8 million. Palestinian officials said that half the funds would be used for rebuilding while the other half would provide budgetary support for Gaza for the next three years.

United Nations officials said they were also encouraged by the symbolic first meeting in Gaza last week of the Palestinian government of national consensus that was formed in June with the backing of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and its rival Hamas, which had previously maintained a monopoly of power.

But the continuation of the reconstruction effort will largely hinge on a United Nations-brokered mechanism to monitor and supervise the process — a tracking system meant to balance between the urgent need for relief in Gaza and Israel’s demand for assurances that the building materials will not end up used by Hamas to rebuild its military infrastructure.

“For this to be successful there needs to be full calm — no rebuilding of tunnels or rockets,” Robert H. Serry, the United Nations special envoy for the Middle East peace process, said in a telephone interview.

The Gaza recovery plan drawn up by the Palestinian government states that 2.5 million tons of rubble must be removed and that 60,000 homes were damaged in the war. Of those, it said, 20,000 were severely damaged or completely destroyed.

The shipment Tuesday of building materials included 600 tons of cement, 50 trucks of aggregates and 10 trucks of metal, according to the office of the Israeli defense ministry that coordinates civilian activities in the Palestinian territories. It described the transfer as a “pilot” presumably meant to test the mechanism for monitoring the reconstruction, which is still in its early stages.

The system for ensuring it was all properly used, agreed upon by the United Nations, the Palestinian Authority and Israel last month, involved running a central database for tracking the ordering and delivery of materials.

 

Once in Gaza, the materials would be transferred to private sector vendors approved by the Palestinian Authority. Contractors and engineers would also have to be licensed by the authority. The United Nations will contract local engineers to carry out spot-checks of some projects.

Nazmi Muhana, the Palestinian Authority’s director of crossing points, described the conditions for shipping the building materials as “strict and complicated.” Speaking by telephone from Ramallah in the West Bank he said the materials had to be stored in warehouses equipped with cameras and protected by guards. Since the Palestinian Authority has no forces on the ground in Gaza, Mr. Muhana said, the authority has handed responsibility for the materials to the United Nations.

Israeli officials have refused to discuss the details publicly; one said exposure would only lead people with an interest to look for and exploit the loopholes.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, said Hamas would have nothing to do with the deliveries of building materials. “This is a Palestinian Authority-United Nations business,” he said. “They have to stop seeking pretexts obstructing the delivery of materials in sufficient amounts.”

The sole goods crossing now in use between Israel and Gaza has the capacity for 400 to 450 trucks per day, according to Israeli officials, and already transfers about 300 to 350 trucks a day of consumer goods. Eventually, when the reconstruction effort is at its peak, the capacity will need to grow to accommodate 700 to 900 trucks a day.

Since Hamas took over the territory in 2007 Israel and Egypt have tightened the restrictions on the movement of people and goods across their borders with Gaza. Critics of the new mechanism for reconstruction say it falls far short of the lifting of the blockade, a condition they say is necessary for Gaza’s recovery.

Israel has shown willingness to ease the blockade after reaching a cease-fire with Hamas in late August. Israel announced on Tuesday that it would allow the export of agricultural produce from Gaza to the West Bank in the coming weeks, beginning with about 15 tons of dates and sweet potatoes and expanding over time to apply to other products, including fish.

But for a full lifting of the closure, Mr. Serry said, “You need more. You need peace.”

Back in Israel, Mr. Ban visited Nirim, an Israeli community just across the border from Gaza where two residents were killed by Palestinian mortar fire in the final hours of the war. He met the grandparents of a 4-year-old Israeli boy who was killed in another mortar attack on a nearby community and was taken by Israeli army officers into one of the tunnels built by Hamas to infiltrate Israeli territory.

That was meant as a poignant reminder of Israel’s security concerns and its fears that Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates the Palestinian enclave, would try to divert funds and materials meant for reconstruction to replenish its rocket stocks and rebuild the destroyed tunnels.

Gaza: Nowhere to Hide

More than one-quarter of Gaza’s population has been displaced, causing a humanitarian crisis.