Washington – The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday it had designated Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas, as a terrorist.
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The State Department said in a statement that Haniyeh, along with two Islamist groups active in Egypt and one in the Palestinian territories, were listed as specially designated global terrorists.
It quoted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as saying the designations “target key terrorist groups and leaders – including two sponsored and directed by Iran – who are threatening the stability of the Middle East, undermining the peace process, and attacking our allies Egypt and Israel.”
In Gaza, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters: “We reject and condemn the decision and we see it as a reflection of the domination by a gang of Zionists of the American decision.”The decision is worthless,” he added.
Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip, advocates Israel’s destruction and is designated as a terrorist group by the United States and some other Western countries.
In December, after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Haniyeh told a rally in Gaza marking the 30th anniversary of Hamas’s founding: “We will knock down Trump’s decision. No superpower is capable of offering Jerusalem to Israel, there is no Israel that it should have a capital named Jerusalem.”
The three groups designated by the State Department are:
– Harakat al-Sabireen, which the statement said is backed by Iran, operates primarily in Gaza and the West Bank, and fired rockets into Israel;
– Liwa al-Thawra, which it said has claimed responsibility for killing an Egyptian army general in Cairo in 2016 and a bombing in 2017;
– Harakat Sawa’d Misr (HASM), which it said claimed responsibility for killing an Egyptian security officer and other attacks.
The State Department designations deny Haniyeh and the three groups access to the U.S. financial system.
You mean to tell me that they weren’t designated a terrorist organization under the Obama administration?
it only took thousands of innocent lives to get to this conclusion. WOW !!!!!
Wow! Don’t be surprised if he somehow gets taken out very soon! Go Trump! The antithesis of the neveila Obama y”s who gave money to terror regimes while turning on Israel! Thank the good Lord this president has his morals and priorities straight!!!! How any Jew could support an anti semite and traitor to America like obama y”s is beyond me! Probably intellectually challenged, to put it mildly…,
This evil animal has not changed his stripes in years, and commits the same terror now as he did 10 years ago. Any reason why the previous administration did not recognize the obvious and label him as a terrorist? The answer is that Obama could not find a Muslim terrorist he did not seek to support or fund. We still have stowaways from his administration in offices in the DOJ and FBI. They need to resign, retire early, or get fired. Their values run counter to the moral codes that comprise our Constitution.
um. duh…