Argentina on Friday designated Hamas as a terrorist organization and ordered a freeze on the financial assets of the Palestinian group, ABC News reported.
The move is symbolic of President Javier Milei’s pro-Israel stance as he seeks to strongly align Argentina with Israel and the US, ABC News reported.
Mieli’s office cited the group’s cross-border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 that killed approximately 1,200 people and took 250 people hostage, in one of the deadliest assaults in Israel’s 76-year-old history, ABC News reported.
The statement also mentioned Hamas’ close ties to Iran which Argentina blames for two deadly militant attacks on Jewish sites in the country.
The move comes just days before the 30th anniversary of one of the attacks, the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. It killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more in the worst such attack in Argentina’s modern history, ABC News reported.
The other attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, killed more than 20 people. Argentina’s judiciary has accused members of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group of carrying out the two attacks.
On Friday, Milei announced his “unwavering commitment to recognizing terrorists for what they are,” adding that “it’s the first time that there is a political will to do so.”
The US, European Union, and several other countries gave a terrorist designation on Hamas, which ruled the Gaza Strip before its current war with Israel.
Previous left-leaning Peronist governments in Argentina, home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America, have maintained friendly ties with Israel but also voiced support for Palestinian statehood.
“Argentina must once again align itself with Western civilization,” Milei’s office said Friday.
For his first state visit as president earlier this year, Milei flew to Jerusalem in a show of support for the Israeli government and promised to move his nation’s embassy to the contested capital — drawing praise from Netanyahu and ire from Hamas.
Hamas: Emerged out of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region
Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, which means “Islamic Resistance Movement” in English. It was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was a Palestinian cleric. After doing Islamic scholarship in Cairo, he was associated with the local branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the 1960s, Yassin preached religious sermons in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Subsequently, in December 1987, Yassin established Hamas as the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. This came in the backdrop of the first intifada – Palestinian attacks against Israel for alleged atrocities in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
Initially, Hamas believed that Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) was a threat to the Muslim Brotherhood so it did everything to ‘counter’ it. In 1988, Hamas published its charter which called for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic society in historic Palestine.
Since April 1993, Hamas has been carrying out suicide bombings. The first reported bombing was done five months before PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords.
The historic accord led to the establishment of limited self-government for parts of the West Bank and Gaza. A new entity called the Palestinian Authority (PA) was created for this purpose. However, Hamas condemned and tried to derail these developments towards peace. It also condemned the PLO’s and Israel’s recognition of each other.
Later, in 1997, the United States designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organisation as it went on to spearhead violent resistance during the second intifada, in the early 2000s. Hamas’s founder, Yassin was killed by Israeli forces in 2004.
Benefactors of the terror organisation
Hamas is a designated terrorist entity and for this reason, it is barred from getting official assistance that the United States and European Union (EU) provide to the PLO in the West Bank. Apart from funding from Palestinian expatriates, private donors in the Persian Gulf, and Islamic charities in the West, Hamas reportedly gets financial and other support from Iran, Turkey, and Qatar among other Islamic nations.
Iran is one of the biggest benefactors of Hamas as it contributes funds, weapons, and training to fight a proxy war against Israel. Iran pumps funds to the tune of $100 million annually to Hamas, PIJ, and other Palestinian outfits designated as terrorist organisations by the United States.
However, during the Syrian civil war, Iran and Hamas had a brief fallout with each other.
Qatar also provides hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Gaza through Hamas. However, foreign aid generally reaches Gaza via the PA and UN agencies.
Earlier, Hamas amassed funds to the tune of $12 million per month from taxes on Egyptian goods imported or smuggled into Gaza through tunnels. Gaza shares a 12 km long border with Egypt on its south. However, in 2013, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi assumed power. Since then, Cairo has ended Hamas’s operation as it asserts that Hamas is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Afterwards, the Egyptian military closed down the majority of tunnels that were crossing into its territory. This action took place during their campaign against a faction affiliated with the self-declared Islamic State on their side of the border, within the Sinai Peninsula.
Additionally, Turkey is another backer of the Hamas particularly after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rose to power in 2002. Though it claims that it backs Hamas only politically, Ankara has been accused of funding Hamas’s terrorism, including through aid diverted from the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency.
(With inputs from ANI)
