Ref: 137/2021
Date: 20 Nov 2021
Original Lang.: Arabic
Press release,
ICSPR: The decision of the British Home Office to consider Hamas a “terrorist organization” is a new British behavior that denies the people’s rights to resist the occupier.
The International Commission to Support Palestinians’ Rights (ICSPR) condemns in the strongest possible terms the announcement that the British Home Secretary Priti Patel made today (November 19, 2021), to designate Hamas as a “terrorist organization” and ban its activities in the entire United Kingdom.
This decision comes in the wake of similar American and European decisions to consider a number of Palestinian movements, organizations and personalities as terrorists.
In 2018, the American Treasury included Mr. Ismail Haniyeh, Head of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and deputy in the Legislative Council on the terrorism list. In mid-October of 2017, the FBI listed the Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine – at that time – Dr. Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, and the liberated detainee Ahlam Al-Tamimi, along with eight other Palestinians on its wanted list.
And prior to that, exactly in 2014, the US State Department listed the Deputy Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement Ziad al-Nakhala on the list of “terrorists”.
ICSPR considers that the British behavior involves a new and clear British disregard for the established principles of international law, order and justice, and gives the green light to the Israeli occupation state to work to deprive the Palestinian people of exercising their legitimate rights, above all, their right to resist the occupier. ICSPR condemns the British decision against the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas – which is considered an extension of the same policies that produced the Balfour Declaration. ICSPR declares its solidarity with the movement, its leadership, its members and all the Palestinian leaders and parties that the various Western administrations listed on what they call terrorist lists. Accordingly:
1- ICSPR affirms that international law has granted peoples under military occupation the right to resist the occupier in all forms until liberation and political and economic independence.
2- ICSPR emphasizes that the new British declaration against Hamas provides additional evidence of British and Western bias towards the occupation state at the expense of international law and justice.
3- ICSPR holds the British government the international responsibility as a partner in any Israeli crime against any Palestinian who is affiliated with Hamas.
4- ICSPR stresses that the various international reports prove with conclusive evidence that the Israeli occupation state is the one that practices international terrorism against the Palestinian people, and that the Palestinian resistance is committed to international norms and conventions regulating international armed conflicts.
5- ICSPR urges Palestinian, Arab and Islamic diplomacy alike to work hard to ensure that the British government abolishes its recent decision, and to work on developing and publishing a Palestinian and Arab blacklist in which the names of Israeli leaders accused of committing international crimes and crimes of terrorism are listed.
ICSPR
