Qatar FM: Hamas is not a terrorist organisation

Qatar’s Foreign Minister Khalid Bin Mohammad Al-Attiyah defended his country’s support of Hamas saying the group is not a terrorist organisation but merely fights the Israeli occupation.

Al-Attiyah stressed, during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, that the “major issue” behind all the turbulence in the Middle East is “that we are lagging behind on the peace process. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or the conflict, is the main igniter for all the turbulence in the Middle East.”

He denied accusations made by Israel’s Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz that Qatar supporting Hamas to launch terrorist attacks in Israel, saying: “Hamas is not a terrorist group. It has a social, political aspect, and another aspect: Resistance. If you lift the occupation, Hamas does not have to fight you. It is a movement of liberation.”

“If you ask a six-year-old child in the Gaza Strip, she will tell you that she has witnessed three fierce wars launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip. Did Israel destroy Hamas with these wars? Of course not, because this is impossible. Israel has no choice but to resort to dialogue with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas,” he said.

Steinitz asked at the panel why Qatar “is supporting a Jihadist organisation like Hamas or Islamic State, instead of putting all its efforts into eliminating such jihadi organisations, whether they are working in Iraq, Gaza, Africa or elsewhere.”

Regarding the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Attiyeh stressed that Qatar does not support the group and is in the coalition against it.

Hamas welcomed the Qatari position.

Al-Attiya likened Israel’s demand to be recognised as a “Jewish State” to ISIS saying: “The world is fighting a group calling itself the Islamic State and you want to come and say [you are] a Jewish state?”

He stressed that one the reasons for the Arab Spring was that the masses were pushing their leaders to find a solution to the conflict and “one of the revolutions’ elements” was the Arab leaders’ failure to deliver.