Why India has not designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation

As the war with Hamas enters Day 20, Israel is finding itself increasingly isolated. Its relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip has left more than 7,000 Palestinians dead, thousands of them children. Jerusalem is in a spat with the United Nations after its chief spoke of Palestinian suffering and oppression. The war-hit nation is trying to drum up support as it takes on Hamas. The Israeli ambassador to India Naor Gilon has said that New Delhi should declare it as a terrorist organisation.

So is Hamas a militant group or not? What is India’s stance and which are the nations that have labelled Hamas as a terror body? We take a look.

What did the Israeli envoy say?

Israeli ambassador Naor Gilon said on Wednesday that his country is in talks with New Delhi about the possibility of India designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

The time has come for India to proscribe Hamas as a terrorist organisation like many other nations have done, Gilon told the media on Wednesday. He said that Israel had conveyed the message to relevant Indian authorities following the brutal attack on Israel on 7 October.

The Israeli diplomat indicated that the matter was taken up earlier as well. He also thanked India for its “100 per cent” support to Israel in its anti-terror operations against Hamas.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first world leaders to condemn the terror attack… India is a very important moral voice in the world and the important countries for us are with us,” Gilon said.

“India is solidly supporting us in our counter-terror operations,” he added.

Why has India not declared Hamas as a terrorist organisation?

After the 7 October attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed deep shock and solidarity with Israel. However, he did not mention Hamas or Palestine.

The Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement on the attack only days later after two expressions of solidarity from the PM. The ministry described the Hamas assault as a terror attack on 12 October but also reaffirmed India’s long-standing position, advocating negotiations towards establishing a “sovereign, independent and viable” state of Palestine living side-by-side at peace with Israel. It did not mention Hamas.

While India has a zero-tolerance policy towards terrorism. It designates a group as a terrorist organisation under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The UAPA was amended in 2019 to include the provision of designating an individual as a terrorist. As of February 2023, there were a total of 44 designated terrorist organisations under the Ist Schedule of the Act. However, this does not include Hamas.

India has been performing a balancing act in West Asia. While it has traditionally supported Palestine and has an old friendship with the Arab world, its ties with Israel are growing. PM Modi has invested in the relationship between New Delhi and Jerusalem.

The 7 October attacks have dragged Hamas into the equation. While Hamas’s military wing has launched attacks against Israel for years, its political wing has promoted the idea that its ultimate aim is a sovereign Palestine state.

Hamas, which has been in control of the Gaza Strip, was democratically elected in 2006 though no polls have been held in the enclave for the past 17 years.

But banning Hamas in India comes with its own set of complexities. The last major international organisation banned by India was ISIS in 2015.

While India uses UAPA to add terror groups to the list, the Act has “very localised requirements for such groups to be added to its terrorism listing, which includes having activities such as operations, finances, and recruitment within Indian territories where Indian laws are applicable. Hamas has had no such known history in the country,” writes Kabir Taneja, a fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

According to him, the politics of declaring Hamas a terrorist organisation may be “more complicated than it looks”. “Support for Palestinians is consistent across Muslim populations, including in India, home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world,” says Taneja in the ORF article “Reading Hamas from an Indian security vantage point”.

Which countries declared Hamas a terrorist organisation?

The United States is Israel’s biggest ally. The US declared Hamas a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in October 1997. This was two years before it designated Al-Qaeda as an FTO in 1997.

The United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and the European Union have officially designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

However, the United Nations Security Council does not recognise Hamas as a terror group.

Which countries support Hamas?

Hamas has sympathisers in the Muslim world. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation but a liberation group fighting to protect Palestinian lands.

“Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people,” he told lawmakers from his ruling AK Party, using an Arabic word denoting those who fight for their faith, reports Reuters.

The Turkish leader also cancelled his trip to Israel. His latest remarks are his strongest yet on the ongoing conflict.

Iran is a big backer of the Palestinian terrorist group and has been assisting it through financial aid and military supplies. While reports emerged that Tehran had a role to play in the Hamas attack, Iran’s top authority Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country was not involved. But he praised Hamas for the attack. “We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack on the Zionist regime,” he added in a televised address on 10 October.

Qatar is also a strong supporter of Hamas and has extended financial support to the Palestinian organisation. It has hosted the group’s political office in its capital of Doha for over a decade and the top Hamas leadership, including its chief Ismail Haniyeh, reportedly lives a life of luxury in the country.

The Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has said that it was in “direct contact with the leadership of the Palestinian resistance”. On 8 October, a day after the Hamas strikes, Hezbollah launched guided rockets and artillery at Israeli-occupied positions in Shebaa Farms. The tensions near the Israel-Lebanon border continue with a senior Hamas official saying earlier that Lebanese Hezbollah “will join the battle if Gaza is subjected to a war of annihilation,” according to a report in The Associated Press (AP).

With inputs from agencies