Hamas Responds to UK Home Secretary's Ban on Palestinian Movement

If approved by Parliament, Home Secretary Priti Patel's proscription of the Palestinian political party could see any of its members entering the UK jailed for up to 10 years as members of a banned terrorist organisation.

Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has hit back at the British home secretary after she announced an official ban on the organisation.

The party, which de facto governs the besieged Gaza Strip in a truce with the Fatah administration of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, responded to Priti Patel's statement earlier on Friday.

In a statement on its website on Friday, Hamas accused the UK of continuing its "aggression against the Palestinian people".

"The UK government should have apologised for its historic sin against the Palestinian people in the shameless Balfour Declaration and the British mandate that handed Palestine to the Israeli occupation," it read. "Now, the UK government sides with the aggressor against the victim."

The 1917 Balfour Declaration by the British government mandated the the settlement of European Jews in Palestine, then under British military occupation after the Entente's victories over Turkey in the First World War — aided by Arab guerrillas led by British Colonel T. E. Lawrence.

31 years later the state of Israel was created by a vote of the United Nations — despite opposition from the UK to independence for the nascent Jewish state. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes in what their descendants call the Nakba or catastrophe.

Hamas insisted it had the right under international law to armed resistance against a foreign occupier — and that the Israeli states actions amounted to terrorism and war crimes.

"We call on all Palestinian factions and supporters of the Palestinian cause in Europe, in general, and Britain, in particular, to denounce the UK's decision as a continuation of its aggression on the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights, which started more than one hundred years ago," the statement said.

In her own statement on Friday, the home secretary said Hamas should be proscribed "in its entirety".

"Hamas has significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry, as well as terrorist training facilities," Patel said "That is why today I have acted to proscribe Hamas in its entirety."

The movement's armed wing the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades wass already banned in the UK, but its political organisation was not.

The ban must be approved by Parliament, but if it is it would allow members of Hamas to be jailed for up to 10 years.