Call for Hamas de-proscription

In the years of Pro-Palestine demonstrations I’ve attended since 7th October 2023, there is rarely a mention of the group at the core of the whole issue: Hamas. For people are fearful to talk about them. But whilst calling for support for Hamas may be illegal, seeking its de-proscription is not. The UK Government’s 2000 Terrorism act permits requesting the de-proscription of any “terrorist” group. You can’t be penalised for calling for de-proscription. Citizens have the right to appeal against proscription if you give a reason as to why its proscription affects you.

Following the events of 7th October 2023, I did exactly that and launched a petition to the Home Secretary. Initially I tried to get the petition before Parliament using the UK Government portal but was told it was beyond Parliament’s remit! So, I launched it online on Go-Petition, promoted it using 20,000 flyers – which I took to all the demonstrations around London and Scotland – and started getting signatures. 

By January, the online petition had 45,000 views and 1,410 signatures which, though fearing arrest, I took to Downing Street. My two supporters and I had our photo taken outside No. 10 and were welcomed into the building by police carrying a big box with Hamas Petition written on it. 

The mainstream media was completely absent, despite my mailing 270 journalists – not one of whom decided to cover it. Only Russia Today, Al Jazeera, The Canary and Middle East Monitor carried it. 

To be clear, although I have previously been in touch with Hamas on a prior campaign to twin Edinburgh with Gaza, they did not request nor have any involvement with this one. Indeed, around this time, an organisation called Riverways Law were asked by Hamas to submit a de-proscription application. 

READ: More than 100 public figures warn UK court over ‘terrorism’ sentencing in Israeli arms factory protest case

Their submission was much more thorough than my 8-page submission to the Home Secretary. You can check it out in full on their website at https://hamascase.com. It had lots of witness statements, including from members of Hamas describing what they saw on 7th October as well as the impact de-proscription was having on people’s lives. It was a phenomenal amount of work. They asked for de-proscription on three grounds:

The Quartet later appointed Tony Blair because of his ability in Northern Ireland to get peace- which was an incredible achievement. But we got peace because we negotiated. We never asked Sinn Fein to recognise Britain’s authority over Ulster. We weren’t asking the same thing that he was then asking Hamas to do. Another example: Nelson Mandela, when he headed the armed wing of the ANC, wasn’t asked to renounce the ANC before discussing peace. 

Also, Hamas is the Gaza administration- so proscription criminalises all public sector workers there. For example, Gaza City Council has 5,000 employees, just looking after the million people who lived in Gaza City. Technically, if you send money to one of those employees- you could be supporting Hamas. So its banning is simply unjust because it criminalises a vast swathe of people. It’s also pointless because they don’t have any influence over Britain.

The original charter was drafted when Hamas was established in 1987; there were some quite harsh things in there. It’s an Islamic resistance movement after all – but that wasn’t the full thoughts of Hamas, because it wasn’t written by all of them, it was written by one man. So, in 2017 they released a clarification – their Principles and Policies. In it, they even said they would settle for a “Hudna”, a truce, along the same lines as what the UN and UK demands – a return to the 1967 borders, Israel giving up the land it had taken then, giving up that occupation. Hamas also wanted the Palestinian prisoners to be released and the Palestinians who were driven out in 1948 to be given the right of return, as the UN had called for in resolution 194. But the Hamas offer of a truce was completely ignored; this proposal wasn’t covered in the West at all. 

Each year Hamas calls for elections; but Fatah each year denies them. It’s true that Hamas would prefer Sharia law, but it has said it will go with the majority in a democratic Palestine. It seeks the end of Israel but would live alongside Jews who gave up Zionism. But none of this was or is talked about.

We get a very twisted view of Hamas. A brief look at its history: it all began with the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt, which was then constituted in Palestine in 1946. The Brotherhood concentrated on philanthropic acts- setting up mosques, schools, universities and so on. Back then Russia and China supported the liberation movements all over the world and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) benefitted from this. As the Soviet Union fell, political Islam rose. In 1987 much of the Brotherhood realised it could not refuse to fight any longer and so with the first intifada in 1987, Hamas emerged. Initially, Israel discreetly supported them as a counter to the secular PLO. But in 1993 matters exploded after Israeli Baruch Goldstein killed 29 worshippers at a mosque in Hebron (Goldstein is a hero nowadays to people like Ben-Gvir); he committed mass murder and injured hundreds more. As a response, the Qasam brigades (the Hamas armed wing) declared they would retaliate, using two suicide bombs in buses against civilians in 1994. This resulted in Hamas’ proscription by the US and then the UK and EU. 

Recall that in 1993, Israel and the PLO had signed the Oslo Accords- without most Palestinians knowing about it.  The PLO was led by Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s party.

Hamas rejected these accords and wouldn’t get involved in the first elections but chose to give the new Palestine Authority (PA) a chance. The PA began then doing what Israel had said they should do in the agreement, which was to jail people who were resisting Israel’s rule. The PA started jailing Hamas supporters, doing Israel’s dirty work. Also, it was becoming quite corrupt.