BREAKING| Hamas condemns UK’s labeling as “terror” group

The Palestinian Islamic resistance movement of Hamas has condemned the United Kingdom’s designation of it as a terror organization and outlawing support for the group, saying “Rather supporting the victim, Britain supports the victimizers.”

“Resisting occupation by all available means, including armed resistance, is a right granted to people under occupation as stated by the international law,” said Hamas in a statement.

“The occupation is the terrorism. Killing the indigenous, forcibly displacing them, demolishing their houses and seizing them is the terrorism,” the movement added.

“Seizing more than 2 million people in the Gaza Strip, most of them children, for more than 15 years is the terrorism. Indeed, what Israel has been doing is a war crime and a crime against humanity, as many of the international human rights groups have called it.”

The movement has called on all pro-Palestine people and sides, particularly in Britain and generally in Europe, to condemn the UK’s move and consider it a continuation of the aggression of the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights.

Hamas political official Sami Abu Zuhri also said Britain’s move showed “absolute bias toward the Israeli occupation and is a submission to Israeli blackmail and dictations.”

Earlier on Friday, Britain’s interior minister Priti Patel said in a statement that the United Kingdom will designate the movement of Hamas as a terror organization and outlaw support for the group, claiming it “has significant terrorist capability.”

“Hamas has significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry, as well as terrorist training facilities,” Patel said.

“That is why today I have acted to proscribe Hamas in its entirety.”

The movement will be banned under the Terrorism Act and that anyone expressing support for Hamas, flying its flag or arranging meetings for the organisation would be in breach of the law, the interior ministry confirmed.

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Thursday, Patel said that distinction was no longer defensible.

“We’ve taken the view that we can no longer disaggregate the sort of military and political side,” she said, according to The Guardian. “It’s based upon a wide range of intelligence, information and also links to terrorism. The severity of that speaks for itself.”

Patel will advance the designation through parliament next week, according to The Guardian.

Until now, Britain had banned in 2001 only Hamas’s military wing — the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, but did not extend that designation to its political arm.

Hamas is on the U.S. list of designated foreign terrorist organisations. The European Union also deems it a terrorist movement.

Based in Gaza, Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, defeating its nationalist rival Fatah.