Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in the Gaza Strip yesterday to protest against an Egyptian court’s decision to declare Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, a “terrorist” group.
Holding posters reading pro-Qassam slogans and waving Hamas’s green flag, the demonstrators chanted “Al-Qassam are not terrorists” and “Al-Qassam is our pride” during the rally in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya.
In a speech to the crowd, senior Hamas official and Palestinian Member of Parliament Mosheer al-Masri said that Saturday’s ruling against the Al-Qassam Brigades was “political” and meant to “conceal failure and the lack of security in Egypt at this time”.
Al-Masri said that Al-Qassam, which sacrificed tens of its leaders and thousands of its fighters for the sake of the liberation of Palestine, is not and could not be a terrorist organisation. He called for the Egyptian court and regime to review its hostile acts against the Palestinian fighters.
Meanwhile, he stressed that despite the false accusations the relationship between Palestinians and Egyptians would remain “very strong” as it has always been in history.
Since Egypt’s military ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, authorities have accused Hamas of aiding jihadists who have carried out a string of deadly attacks on security forces in the Sinai Peninsula.
The verdict followed a complaint from a lawyer accusing Hamas’s armed wing of direct involvement in “terrorist operations” in the Sinai, which borders Gaza, a court official said.
The lawyer also accused the movement of using tunnels under the frontier between Egypt and Gaza to smuggle arms used in attacks against the police and army.
Egypt also accuses Hamas of supporting the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.