Application for Deproscription of Hamas
Application under section 4(1)(a) of the Act
I am applying for the deproscripton of Hamas from the Proscribed Organisations list on the following grounds:
Preamble
The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation in the United Kingdom, Mr David Anderson QC, has made the point that ‘the current law allows members of any nationalist or separatist group to be turned into terrorists by virtue of their participation in a lawful armed conflict, however great the provocation and however odious the regime which they have attacked’.
The U.N. General Assembly’s working group seeking to agree a comprehensive international convention on terrorism, reported in 2012 that there were disagreements as to the precise distinction between terrorism and ‘legitimate struggle of peoples fighting in the exercise of their right to self-determination’.
I declare here that Hamas are clearly an example of the latter. The absolute truth is that the British Government gave Palestine away to the Zionist Federation in 1917. When we set out to resettle Jews in Palestine we ourselves declared that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". It is clear that this condition has been absolutely ignored.
We must begin by recognising that Jews and Muslims lived together in harmony for 1,400 years before the British seized the land from the Ottomans. Now, 106 years on, there are over 60 laws prejudicing non-Jews and the rightward drift of the Israeli Government makes clear that they would like the Palestinians gone. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who was Polish, declared the Arab peasant farmers of Palestine were actually the descendants of Jews who had lived there since before the Arab conquest- they were of the ancient Hebrews. That did not discourage him from orchestrating, in 1948, the expulsion of 750,000 of these Palestinians and the obliteration of over 500 towns and villages, promising the Holocaust survivors that he put in their place that these Palestinians would never return. The fact is that we, under the British Mandate, facilitated this act; throughout the period of our rule there we brutally suppressed any aspirations that Palestinians had of statehood, whilst facilitating the Histradut and the Hagganah, training the Zionist settlers in weaponry, whilst going to the utmost lengths to deprive any Arab of any gun. That the Zionists then turned on us is indisputable and when we fled, we left them the arms they needed to drive the “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” into the refugee camps they languish in to this day. A great deal more land was stolen from the Palestinians and their Arab protectors in the 1967 Israeli “Six-Day War”- and continues to be taken, on a daily basis, through the racist laws put in place by the Zionists.
Hamas are the descendants of those exiled Palestinians. If ever there was an example of a ‘legitimate struggle of a people fighting in the exercise of their right to self-determination’, Hamas would be one.
Israel accepts that it is occupying Palestinian land and denies the legitimacy of Palestinian statehood, therefore Gaza and the West Bank are not a "foreign state" for the purposes of Article 51. The International Court of Justice therefore concluded, in that same judgment, that Article 51 had no applicability to Israel since Palestine is occupied.  In the absence of Article 51, it is the law of belligerent occupation that applies between Israel and Palestine. The "occupation law" is part of international humanitarian law which sets parameters of conduct in war. Found in the 1907 Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949 and its optional protocols, it identifies occupied people as "protected". These regulations make several things illegal, including collective punishment, the annexation of land, reprisal attacks, the destruction or seizure of property, and collective or individual forcible transfer of people, among other things. Israel has contravened every single one of these laws on multiple occasions, resulting in repeated censure from the UN General Assembly and Security Council.  Occupation law also imposes an obligation on the occupying state to provide public order through policing, safety, food and medical care.  Occupation law prevents an occupying state, in this case Israel, from using resistance to occupation as a justification for attacking the occupied people in a collective way. It can, however, defend its people, but is limited in the extent to which this can occur. Where violence from Palestinian resistance occurs, Israel is bound to respond by using police powers afforded under occupation laws, intended to keep the peace and, exceptionally, to use military force which must adhere to international humanitarian laws. The destruction of entire neighbourhoods, the killing of thousands of civilians, and the cutting off of all basic supplies do not conform to international law.   Conversely, Palestinians have the legal right to resist occupation in pursuit of their struggle for self-determination. This right is enshrined in Article 1 of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The latter states: "All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development." The UN General Assembly Resolution 2672 in 1970 affirmed the right of Palestinian people to self-determination, as did the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the legality of the wall (2004). Resistance to occupation is legitimate for the purposes of self-determination.
This struggle can take all legitimate forms. The Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination has been overwhelmingly non-violent. However, the peaceful protests in Gaza of the Great Return March and in the West Bank were met with deadly force from Israel, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.   
Seen in this light, Hamas’ use of arms is an example of the ‘legitimate struggle of peoples fighting in the exercise of their right to self-determination’, as peaceful resistance to 75 years of belligerent occupation has so clearly failed.
Hamas’s “Document of General Principles and Policies” of May 2017 states “16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project, not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.” In point 18, they declare that “The establishment of “Israel” is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and goes against their will and the will of the Ummah; it is also in violation of human rights that are guaranteed by international conventions, foremost among them is the right to self-determination.” It is absolutely the case that the British, the US and the UN conferred statehood on Israel without recourse to the Palestinians and seen in this light, Hamas objectives are entirely logical. Would we settle for anything less, were our country to be given away to foreign invaders, without our consent?
The memo prepared by Hamas Political bureau in 2000, just before the eruption of the second intifada, states that their- 
“military action is subject to fixed policies. The most important of these are: 1. The conflict with the Zionists is not linked to their religious affiliation, but is because they occupy our land, desecrate our shrines and violate our people. 2. Resistance, with all its forms, is aimed at ending the occupation and will not stop until it is defeated and ended. 3. Hamas’s military action is confined to the land of Palestine, both that occupied in 1948 and that occupied in 1967. 4. With its military action, the movement does not target civilian Zionists; it only targets military targets. Civilians may, however, be inadvertently hit or may be targeted only in retaliation for the enemy’s targeting of Palestinian civilians.”
It is in this context that Hamas’s use of rockets fired from Gaza needs to be seen, as retaliation for Israel’s targeting of Palestinian civilians. It is much as we British did to the Germans in WW2 in our bombing campaigns. It is also salient to note that since 2000, Hamas rockets have resulted in the deaths of around 44 Israelis, whilst Israel’s bombing of Gaza has killed over 24,000 Palestinians. We should not forget that we British, in tandem with the US, destroyed Dresden, killing at least 30,000 people, as part revenge for the Blitz. More recently, again with the US, we killed over 300,000 civilians in an illegal war with Iraq. We (and the Israelis) are far more guilty of terrorism than Hamas, in our use of violence to secure regime change.
If the recent events of October 7th are used to tar Hamas as terrorists, let us reflect on what took place that day. The Qassam Brigades broke out of what leaders (including Lord Cameron) describe as an illegal “prison camp” in an action which the Israelis initially claimed led to 1,400 Israeli deaths. But then former Israeli ambassador Mark Regev, now a key Netanyahu adviser, inadvertently admitted that many charred bodies had been rendered unrecognisable, burned by Israeli weapons – (for military experts and commentators know that Hamas does not have weapons that would do that) – when he said that two hundred bodies that had been thought to be Israeli, were in fact Palestinians. Many of those who died could not be identified, not because of what Palestinian fighters did on motorcycles with Kalashnikovs, but because of what Israel did with Mavara tanks and Apache helicopters wielding Hellfire missiles. That a great number of the 1400 corpses were burned beyond recognition leads to but one conclusion- they died by Israeli munitions- not Hamas.
There is, furthermore, no evidence of torture, mutilation and rape. There is only an image of a woman having a period. There is no evidence of any beheadings either, US President Biden has now admitted. This is Israeli hasbara; no pictures have been presented of on-site evidence- only reports from Israeli army personnel, who turned out to be an unreliable West Bank settler. It took Israel a fortnight before it presented what they claim is visual evidence of torture; could AI have been used? But what is absolutely clear is that many – possibly 50% of those who died- were killed by Israeli forces. Images or cars full of burned corpses and destroyed houses could not have been done by lightly-armed Palestinians. The IDS itself admitted that Apache helicopters shot up every car headed to Gaza that it could find, all of which contained Israelis being taken there. The video from Electronic Intifada includes eye-witness Israeli civilian and helicopter pilot accounts which confirm this.

I believe that the deaths of 1200 Israelis came about as a result of legitimate armed struggle that was countered by maximum Israeli firepower. Qassam fighters were clear that their mission on the 7th Oct was to take Israelis into administrative detention, not to kill them. The Hamas video interview with Sky TV about Israelis held in Gaza confirms this.

The Israeli State radio interview from a woman at the music festival explains that Israelis were shooting their own people; much more of the interview was included in the Electronic Intifada article of the 16th October. 

There is a Zionist army order called the ‘Hannibal Directive’, which allows Israeli forces to kill their own people to prevent them being taken captive. This was drafted in 1986, after a number of abductions of IDF soldiers in Lebanon and the subsequent controversial prisoner exchanges.
Netanyahu was humiliatingly forced into the 2011 prisoner exchange when 1,027 Palestinians were exchanged for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. So great is Israel’s fear of their citizens being used as a bargaining chip, that they advocate the course of Carthaginian General Hannibal, who killed himself rather than be taken prisoner. On the 13th November, Israeli Air Force Colonel Nof Erez admitted air force targeted Palestinian and Israeli civilians in line with the “Hannibal Directive”. On the 18th Nov he said that on the first day the Israeli forces were following “Mass Hannibal”. He was saying that many of the Oct 7th killings came about through an IDF directive- not by Hamas. An Israeli official told reporters that the IDF would strike Hamas "everywhere in Gaza, even at the cost of possibly harming some of the Israeli hostages being held there”

Wikipedia observes that “Right from the onset of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, the IDF had demonstrated behaviour compatible with the Hannibal Directive: according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Kibbutz Be'eri was heavily shelled by Israeli forces, who had decided to "eliminate the [Palestinian] terrorists along with the [Israeli] hostages". At least 112 Israelis were killed in the kibbutz, as this eye-witness account confirms: 
“His voice trembles when his partner, who was besieged in her home shelter at the time, comes to mind. According to him, only on Monday night and only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions — including shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages — did the IDF complete the takeover of the kibbutz. The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed.”

The Cradle reported on Nov 9th that Israeli Apache helicopters killed their own soldiers and civilians on 7th October, as supported by the photo of many wrecked cars, after the Israeli military released drone footage showing hundreds of scorched and damaged vehicles attacked as they moved from the Nova music festival, providing further evidence that Israeli forces killed many of their own during the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October. All the attacks were summarised in Spanish Halyon and in Scheerpost . The Grayzone has also pulled much information together here: “October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles”. 

Hamas has called for an international investigation into the atrocities on October 7th, after evidence exposed Israel was guilty of murdering many of their own civilians.

This Israeli Air Force article says “The pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian… The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”

But there were not thousands of Qassam fighters- there were 1,500; the rest were Israelis. Actual footage from the Israeli helicopters as they destroyed cars can be seen here. And there is more footage on the official account of the IDF on Twitter. Middle East Monitor chronicled the evidence also. Admittedly, there were some rogue elements that came from Gaza after the fence was torn down and it was these people who shot indiscriminately at Israeli civilians.

Haaretz Newspaper was able to name less than 980 of those who died; some are yet to be identified. The bodies of those who died were buried with undue haste- post-mortems would likely have shown they died from Israeli, not Hamas, munitions. The Cradle published more details on Oct 24th; Redress’s article was published on 12th Nov .

On the 16th Nov at Al Shifa hospital, the Israeli Army was caught out claiming a Hamas command centre, when they showed what they said was a Hamas laptop, that was exposed as IDF equipment, complete with Hebrew keys.

As the investigation into Shireen Abu Akleh, the American/Palestinian journalist killed by the Israeli army, has shown, denial and lies abound in Israeli reports. 

To summarise, what we have seen, since Oct 7th, is a slaughter perpetrated by Israel on hundreds of its own citizens, being used to justify a far greater slaughter of thousands of Palestinians. 

Regarding those held captive by either side: Israelis held by the Qassam brigades have testified to the humane treatment they have received whilst detained. This is in stark contrast to the beatings, thefts and torture meted out to the 5,000 émigré Palestinian workers left stranded outside Gaza, after the border fence was sealed again by Israel.

Further evidence that Hamas are not terrorists can be deduced because it has declared it would accept a truce with Israel. Point 20 of the 2017 statement reads: 
”Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”

Furthermore, please note that Hamas are committed to democracy: point 30 on the May 2017 statement notes “Hamas stresses the necessity of building Palestinian national institutions on sound democratic principles, foremost among them are free and fair elections.” 
Bearing this in mind, Hamas makes clear that if the Zionists were prepared to abandon Zionism, they would be permitted to remain in Palestine on the basis of one democratic Palestine; Hamas are clear that whilst their preference would be for an Islamic state, they will abide by the wishes of the majority.
This one-state approach is the only realistic remedy to the Israel/Palestine situation. The “two-state solution” advocated by our UK and other Western governments is plainly unachievable- Israel has killed it- the 500,000 plus Zionist settlers in the Negev desert will not move; there is now simply not enough contiguous land to create a viable Palestinian state. Hamas’s pursuit of a single state for all with full equal rights has echoes in the arrangements arrived at for a peaceful South Africa and is the only viable approach to resolving the Palestinian issue.
When the UK Government declared all parts of Hamas terrorist in 2021. the European Council on Foreign Relations thought this a mistake. It noted “A motion to label the entire Hamas movement as “terrorists” was an attempt to score political points at the cost of a peace-making strategy for Israel-Palestine.” 
Even our former Leader Tony Blair said in 2017 that “We were wrong to boycott Hamas after its election win.” The Palestinian Christian leader Hanan Ashrawi recently pointed out on Channel 4 news that Hamas are part of the fabric of Palestinian life and cannot be removed.

Please note we British negotiated with Sinn Fein and that resulted in peace in Northern Ireland, at the same time as we were condemning their military wing, the Provisional IRA. When the IRA bombed Birmingham and Manchester, did our UK Government send the RAF and British Army to level Londonderry? Palestine is no different. If we exclude a political partner, we cannot hope for peace. The British Government should return to its position before 2021, when only the Qassam Brigades were banned.

Given that we British played such a huge part in the theft of statehood from Palestine, it is critical that we accept responsibility for the suffering we have caused alongside supporting the struggle for redress; we can begin this duty by removing Hamas from the Proscribed List. 

Statement
To conclude, I am calling for the removal of the Hamas political wing from the Proscribed list. Whilst the military wing was proscribed by Blair’s Government of 2001, the political wing was only proscribed by your predecessor Priti Patel two years ago, following her secret meetings whilst on holiday in Israel. It was passed in parliament without a vote.
With death and destruction in Gaza, we think now is the time to re-open communications with Hamas’ political wing; they are the democratically elected leaders of Palestine. Britain regards the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel as wrong, yet by proscribing Hamas, we exclude Gazan leaders from conversations about resolution. Because we created Israel, the responsibility to resolve the occupation falls squarely upon us.
International law guarantees Palestinians the right to resist occupation, including armed resistance- a course which Hamas follows, but few western governments acknowledge. United Nations resolution 37/43 of 1982, “reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”

 The resolution’s preamble makes clear that it refers specifically to the rights of Palestinians: “Considering that the denial of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, sovereignty, independence and return to Palestine and the repeated acts of aggression by Israel against the peoples of the region constitute a serious threat to international peace and security.”
Under international law, Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal, and Palestinians have a right to “armed struggle” against their illegal occupier – thus, ipso facto, Palestinians have a right to defend themselves against Israel – but Israel’s right to defend itself against Palestinian resistance is not guaranteed in the same manner.
Hamas’ most recent communiqué of 2017 underlines their commitment to abide by the democratic will of a new Palestine – one that includes their oppressors, on the understanding that they cease their Zionist aspirations. They may seek an Islamic state, but they declare they will abide with the democratic preference of a majority- in an electorate that would include those identifying as Jews. No Zionist would be forced to leave a Palestine that was run by Hamas. Muslim lands have – and still do – welcome Jews, as “people of the book”.

Whilst Israel believes it can wipe out Hamas, we believe that translates into wiping out the Gazan people, for they elected Hamas and are closely intertwined with that body, seeing them as the only committed fighters against 75 years of occupation. In 2006 the Palestinians appointed Hamas to lead them; please note that the Palestine Authority rejects Hamas’s annual calls for fresh elections. 
I declare that because we recently proscribed Hamas’s political wing, we leave Gazans without a voice. That decision must be reversed.
Declaration
I am/am not representing an organisation (delete as appropriate)
If representing an organisation, please state the position held in the organisation (or the authority to act on behalf of the organisation)- and name and address
Position:
Name:
Address:
If applying personally, please state the manner in which the applicant is affected by the proscription and name and address. 
Manner affected: The Terrorism Act 2000 forbids me from supporting Hamas in any fashion. The proscription runs counter to my rights to freedom of expression as articulated under Article 10 of the 1997 Human Rights Act. Ergo, as one who supports the self-determination of the Palestinian people and who recognises armed struggle as being necessary, in response to an illegal and brutal military occupation, I seek to see Hamas removed from the proscribed list. 
Name:
Address:

Signed:
Date: