NEW YORK (Dispatches) – United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths has said the UN does not consider Hamas a “terrorist group”, classing it as a “political group”.
In an interview with Sky News on T, Griffith said on Thursday, “I have worked with many, many, many diff terrorist and insurgent groups. Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, as you know, it’s a political group.”
Asked if he thinks the Zionist regime’s stated aim for bombing Gaza, eliminating Hamas, is achievable, he said: “I think, it’s very, very difficult to dislodged these groups without a negotiated solution which includes their aspirations. I cannot think of an example of a place where a victory through warfare has succeeded against a well entrenched group, terrorist or otherwise.”
Griffith then took to social media to expand on his remarks, saying: “Just to clarify: Hamas is not on the list of groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations Security Council.”
Hamas is a political movement, established in the late 1980s by the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the occupation. In 2006, it won Palestine’s democratically-held national election.
Israel has long sought to vilify Hamas, claiming it to be a “terrorist organization” because it stands against the Zionist regime’s ongoing ethnic cleansing and occupation of Palestinian lands.
In 2017, at a conference organized by MEMO, former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw intimated that he was dismissed from government because he had urged the government to talk to Hamas. “Some people say I was removed from the post of foreign secretary” because of these comments, he said.