An application to remove Hamas from the United Kingdom's list of proscribed terrorist organizations was filed Wednesday by a team of British lawyers, arguing that Hamas's actions against Israel were legitimate and posed no threat against Britain.
Riverway Law announced in an X video that they had been instructed by Hamas to file the application to the Home Department, and the team hoped that State Secretary Yvette Cooper would have the "courage to make the correct decision" to reverse the 2001 banning of its military wing and 2021 banning of its political branch.
Today, our legal team submitted the application to the Home office to remove Hamas from the banned list of organisations under UK Counter terrorism powersYou can read the full legal application here: https://t.co/Zxov8lhle8 pic.twitter.com/b7N07fuH5X
— Riverway Law (@riverwaylaw) April 9, 2025
Acting on behalf of Hamas senior official Dr Mousa Abu Marzouk, the attorneys argued that Hamas's armed violence was legitimate in response to alleged colonization, occupation, apartheid, and genocide. As an ostensibly colonial entity, Israel didn't have a right to exist, but Hamas had a right to end the Jewish state "by all available means, including armed struggle." Armed violence against what they argued was a settler state was "moral, legitimate and explicitly enshrined in international law."
"Zionism is and always has been a staggering affront to Palestinian dignity, and Hamas is a natural and logical part of the response to it," claimed the submission. "If Hamas did not exist, Palestinians would invent it."
The application railed against historical British involvement in the mandate in the Levant and the establishment of Israel, emphasizing the 1917 Balfour Declaration as a foundational document. The filing argued that the declaration was antisemitic because it was designed to prevent persecuted Jews from coming to the British Isles. Contemporary British support was collaboration in the crimes, according to Hamas, that justified its actions.
"The continued proscription of Hamas means support for – and complicity in – the unrelenting colonization of Palestine and crimes against humanity and acts of genocide being perpetrated by the Zionist State," the filing argued.
The lawyers for Hamas assured that Hamas did not pose any threat to foreign states like Britain, which made its proscription political and disproportionate. Banning Hamas as a terrorist organization is in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights because it restricted political speech.
"Neither Hamas nor the [Izz al-Din al-] Qassam Brigades pose any threat to foreign States," read the filing. "Indeed, there is simply no evidence that they have ever conducted attacks outside of ‘Israel’ and the occupied Palestinian territories."
The legal definition of "terrorism"
The attorneys questioned the term "terrorism" as one used to defame and malign organizations and "freedom fighters."
The 2000 Terrorism Act described terrorism as being "designed to influence a government or an international governmental organization or to intimidate the public or a section of the public" for "the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause," which Hamas argued was too broad and could apply to any group using violence to achieve objectives -- including state militaries.
Political violence, like that by Hamas, came in response to injustice, argued the filing. The submission claimed that the post-1967 Six Day War environment, in which there were no political solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, coupled with increased restrictions on Palestinians due to decades of terrorism, gave rise to Hamas, which supposedly had no other choice but to use violence.
While Hamas argued that it had no choice but to use violence, the attorneys did not address how the violence was used against civilians, which is a factor in many legal definitions of terrorism. The filing described the "intensification" of "armed resistance" during the Second Intifada, calling suicide bombings "martyrdom operations."
Hamas explained that it had no choice but to continue to use violent means once it gained control of violence, as Israel and other states refused to engage with the terrorist enclave. Fatah was also blamed for rejecting amas rule, glossing over the civil war that ensued.
In his statement, Marzouk asserted that the October 7 Massacre was a pre-emptive attack before the IDF attacked Palestinian terrorists.
"Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 was a necessary step and a normal response to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people and their cause," claimed Marzouk. "It was a defensive act in the frame of getting rid of the Israeli occupation, reclaiming the Palestinians rights and on the way for liberation and independence like all peoples around the world did."
The attorneys explained that Hamas's launching of the October 7 Massacre was justified because of the increased presence of Jewish Israelis at the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa compound, to disrupt normalization between Israel and Arab states at the expense of diminished Palestinian negotiation leverage, and to be able to free Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.
"Prisoner exchanges have been the most significant mechanism of the Palestinian national movement to free large numbers of Palestinian prisoners," explained the filing.
Marzouk claimed that Hamas didn't intend to take civilians hostage, and that the deaths of civilians hostages were the fault of the IDF or emotional outbursts by captors due to the suffering Israeli military operations inflicted on them.
The Hamas official denied that the intention was to attack civilians and denied atrocities such as mass rape against non-combatants because Hamas soldiers were holy warriors. The Hamas official blamed attacks on Israeli civilians on other factions that participated in the pogrom, and on the chaos that ensued because of the collapse of Israeli security.
He also denied that some Israelis listed as civilians were actually civilians, because they took up arms to defend themselves. Lastly, he claimed that the IDF was responsible for the death of a significant number of the civilians killed during the Hamas-led onslaught.
The law firm also submitted documents explaining the principles of Hamas, including its 2006 election manifesto. Other documents included explanations of Zionism as a "maximalist ideology" by Professor Sami Al-Arian, who was sentenced to prison and deported from the US for support of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and an explanation of the importance of Palestinian prisoners by Samidoun International coordinator Charlotte Kates, whose organization was proscribed in the US, Germany, and Canada as a branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.