The EU said Wednesday it still considers Hamas to be a “terrorist” group even though a European court ruled that it should be removed from the bloc’s terrorism blacklist.
“The EU continues to consider Hamas a terrorist organisation,” European Commission spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said, adding that the EU would consider its response to the court’s ruling, including the possibility of an appeal.
Kocijancic statement coincided with the demand by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that EU immediately restore Hamas to its terrorism blacklist, after a European court ordered the Palestinian Islamist group’s removal.
“We are not satisfied with the European Union’s explanation that the removal of Hamas from its list of terrorist organisations is a ‘technical matter’,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
“We expect it (the EU) to put Hamas back on the list forthwith given that it is understood by all that Hamas — a murderous terrorist organisation, the covenant of which specifies the destruction of Israel as its goal — is an inseparable part of this list,” he said.
The General Court of the European Union ruled Wednesday that the original listing of Hamas in 2001 was based not on sound legal judgements but on conclusions derived from the media and the Internet.
But it stressed that the decision to remove Hamas was based on technical grounds and does “not imply any substantive assessment of the question of the classification of Hamas as a terrorist group”.
Hamas, which has been dominated Gaza since 2007, had appealed against its inclusion on the blacklist on several grounds.
It hailed the court’s decision as a “victory.”
Israel and Hamas fought a bloody 50-day war in July and August which killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 73 people on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.