The General Court of the European Union, the EU's second highest tribunal, has removed Hamas from the EU list of terror organizations but temporarily maintained the blacklist measures for a period of three months or until an appeal was closed, giving EU member states time to provide more evidence for Hamas's inclusion on list.
The EU list of terror organizations is reviewed every six months.
The Court, which is a lower tribunal in the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, said the contested blacklist measures were not based on an examination of Hamas's acts but on imputations derived from the media and the Internet.
The court said it was nevertheless maintaining the effects of the measures in order to ensure that any possible future freezing of funds would be effective.
Hamas was added to the terror list in 2001 following a push by Israel and the US to have the Islamist terror group - whose charter pledges to destroy Israel and calls for a genocide against the Jewish people - recognized as such in Europe.
However, after the Court removed the Sri Lankan terror group the Tamil Tigers from the list a few months ago, Hamas followed suit and appealed on the same grounds of a ‘’lack of legal evidence to brand Hamas a terror organization.’’
A source within the EU said that the decision was ‘’not political, but rather deals with a technical claim made by Hamas.’’ The source also said that the EU will most likely ask for further evidence prior to making any final decisions.
Israel and the EU said that the change will not have an effect on the group's position as a terror group in Europe as the court will be given a few months to rebuild the file against Hamas with evidence that will enable the Gaza-based group to remain on the list of terror organizations.
Some European countries have already started gathering intelligence information to build a strong case against Hamas.
Ahead of the decision, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon said it was unlikely that the court would decide to take the organization off the terrorist list, but rather would ask for more evidence to keep it on. He said there was no support among the EU states to take Hamas off the list, and that two central countries – which he would not name – already were building up a stronger dossier of evidence of Hamas terrorism to take to the court.
One diplomatic official said the whole discussion was “absurd in the extreme.”
“It was just last month that you had the vicious, brutal attack at the Har Nof synagogue [in Jerusalem] that received wall-to-wall condemnation around the world,” he said. “Hamas openly celebrated the atrocity and called for more such attacks. Hamas has proven that it remains a hardcore terrorist organization.”
As in the Tamil Tigers case, such a ruling does not impact an existing freeze on all European funds to Hamas. And, it will likely give EU authorities several months to rebuild its evidence that Hamas is a terrorist organisation.
Matthew Levitt, director of The Washington Institute’s Program on counter-terrorism and Intelligence said “EU authorities have been working closely with Israel to counter the burgeoning Hamas fundraising network that has been taking root in Europe despite the EU ban. Those investigations should now serve as the basis for a renewed terrorist designation of Hamas.”
Danny Danon, a Likud member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, slammed the decision.
"The Europeans must believe that their blood is holier and Israeli blood is cheap, otherwise you cannot understand how the court can discuss the removal of Hamas from the list of terrorist organizations. Europe seems to have forgotten that Hamas kidnapped three youths and fired last summer thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians," he said.
“This is a European hypocrisy that continues their two-faced proposal to support the establishment of a Palestinian state. The morality in The Hague is: kill Israelis - and receive a state,” he added.
Labour leader Isaac Herzog and Hatnuah leader Tzipi Livni released a joint statement on the issue, describing a ruling upholding Hamas’s appeal as “a big mistake.”
At an armed parade in the streets of Gaza last weekend, on the occasion of the 27th anniversary of the creation of Hamas, one if its leader reaffirmed the group’s charter pledge to destroy Israel.
"This illusion called Israel will be removed. It will be removed at the hands of the Qassam Brigades," said Khalil al-Hayya, referring to the movement's armed wing.
Hamas' military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades also issued a propaganda video, featuring the voice of wanted terrorist Muhammad Deif. Deif, the Chief Commander of the brigade, has allegedly survived five Israeli airstrikes, the most recent during Operation Protective Edge.
Deif's voice in the video comes from an old recording which was broadcast during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012. In the recording, Deif can be heard saying "It is time to purify the Al-Aqsa Mosque from Jews."
During the armed rally in Gaza City, Hamas paraded around the streets and featured its members burning an effigy of a Jew and a model of the Temple. In addition, they carried around coffins with photos of the rabbis murdered in the Har Nof synagogue attack.
Following are 15 facts about Hamas:
1. Hamas takes its name from an acronym that means “Islamic Resistance Movement” in Arabic.
2. Hamas refuses to recognize the State of Israel’s right to exist as an independent, sovereign nation, and is totally opposed to any agreement or arrangement that would recognize its right to exist. At the beginning of its charter there is a quotation attributed to Hassan Al-Bana, the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, that “Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam wipes it out, as it wiped out what went before.”
3. Hamas is committed to jihad. Its charter stresses the importance of jihad (holy war) as the main means for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to achieve its goals: An uncompromising jihad must be waged against Israel. Jihad is the personal duty of every Muslim.
4. Hamas is an anti-Semitic organization. According to its charter, the Jewish people have only negative traits and are presented as planning to take over the world. The charter uses myths taken from classical European and Islamic-based anti-Semitism.
5. The Hamas Charter includes anti-Semitic myths taken from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (mentioned in Article 32) regarding Jewish control of the media, the film industry and education (Articles 17 and 22). The myths are constantly repeated to represent the Jews as responsible for the French and Russian revolutions and for all world and local wars: “No war takes place anywhere without the Jews’ being behind it” (Article 22). The charter demonizes the Jews and describes them as brutally behaving like Nazis toward women and children (Article 29).
6. Hamas is the local Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which recently took control of the Egyptian government.
7. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, Canada, the European Union and Japan.
8. Although members of the international community have proposed treating the political and military wings of Hamas as separate entities, the Hamas infrastructure places the political wing at the command of the military wing. As Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin stated in 1988: “We can not separate the wing from the body. If we do so, the body will not be able to fly. Hamas is one body.”
9. Hamas’s first ever suicide bombing took place on April 16, 1993 when a suicide bomber detonated the car in which he was driving at the Mehola Junction near Beit El.
10. On January 27, 2002, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, Wafa Idris, blew herself up on Jaffa Street in the heart of downtown Jerusalem, killing one person and injuring about 100 more. Hamas claimed responsibility.
11. Hamas has been responsible for many appalling acts of terror including the suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya, in the midst of the Passover holiday seder with 250 guests. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack in which 30 people were killed and 140 injured – 20 seriously.
12. In December 2011, Hamas “celebrated” its 24th anniversary, boasting that it had killed 1365 “Zionist soldiers” since 1987. Hamas does not differentiate between Israeli soldiers and civilians.
13. Hamas won a four year term at the head of the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006 but remains in office indefinitely.
14. In June 2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip through a violent coup, killing numerous Palestinians, some by pushing them off of tall buildings in Gaza. The Red Cross estimated that at least 118 people were killed and more than 550 wounded during the fighting in the week up to June 15.
15. Hamas members use Palestinian children as human shields when carrying out attacks on Israeli soldiers.