Despite Hamas’s elevation in the scale of global terrorism, India’s reasons for banning this group are much more complex
The scale of the terror attack against Israel orchestrated by Hamas on 7 October is still unfolding. Over 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed in an audacious strike by the Palestinian group, using air, sea, and land. What is even more worrying, is a confirmation that around 199 civilians were taken hostage by Hamas in Gaza. Israel, still reeling from the shock of its own mammoth intelligence failure, has begun a mass retaliation campaign by bombing Gaza’s 40-kilometre long and no more than 12-kilometre-wide territory while it also reportedly prepares ground for a full-scale invasion. Since the attack, a new spotlight has appeared on Hamas—a group banned by multiple Western countries, but also one that falls in the crevasse between a terrorist group and one masquerading as a “resistance” movement for Palestine. Its military wing, known as the al-Qassam Brigade, has conducted attacks against Israel for years, while its political infrastructure has promoted the ideation of the group’s centrality to the larger aim of a sovereign Palestinian state and the defeat of a Jewish one.
Israel, still reeling from the shock of its own mammoth intelligence failure, has begun a mass retaliation campaign by bombing Gaza’s 40-kilometre long and no more than 12-kilometre-wide territory while it also reportedly prepares ground for a full-scale invasion.
In the beginning, at the core of the ‘Islamist’ part of these movements were ideologues such as Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a Palestinian Salafist jihadist who had joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s, diverging away from the revolutionary-Marxist leanings of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Azzam was a child during the displacement of the Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, also known as the ‘Nakba’. Azzam’s ideological push had made him a popular propagator of jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s up until his assassination in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1989. The Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, of course, was the foundation on which Hamas was built. Azzam, in mainstream discourse in India, is hardly a known name, much like Hamas, but both have a significant impact on pan-Islamic ideologies that prioritise war for the protection of Islam and Muslims, and not just Arab states, governments, geographies, or monarchies. While there have been other Palestinian leaders and political entities over the decades, including Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, Hamas has kept the idea of an armed struggle at its core. Since the attack, both Israel and the United States (US) have equated Hamas to the likes of the Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh in Arabic) and Al-Qaeda. This is due to both its brutality and the scale at which the operation on 7 October took place. This comparison alone has brought the name of Hamas to a global audience, many of whom were either unaware of the group or had heard of them only in passing. Bans against Hamas have come largely either through multilateral systems such as the United Nations (UN) or largely Western countries that have been direct or indirect, contemporarily, or historically, stakeholders in West Asia’s (Middle East) geopolitics. The US declared Hamas a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) in October 1997 and, since then, the group’s leadership, finances, and ecosystems have been under intense scrutiny. To put this in perspective, the US proscribed Al Qaeda as an FTO only in 1999.
Since the attack, both Israel and the United States (US) have equated Hamas to the likes of the Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh in Arabic) and Al-Qaeda.
Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s tweet condemning the terror attack against Israel has garnered a lot of attention and analysis on what it means for India’s historic stance on the issue of Palestine and its more direct diplomacy in the recent past highlighting terrorism as the global scourge it is. In fact, PM Modi’s public comment had to come in words that categorically condemn terror attacks. Politically, New Delhi cannot be seen as walking a tightrope on terrorism after the gains it has made on the issue at forums such as the UN after hosting the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee meeting in 2022. Moreover, on critical issues such as Afghanistan where the Taliban has returned to power, New Delhi has had to push to keep this as a forefront agenda as the narrative marking the end of the ’War on Terror’ era takes hold. A few days after PM Modi’s tweet, India’s Ministry of External Affairs reiterated this stand on no tolerance for terror, while also reiterating the continuation of India’s historical support towards a two-state solution. In 2017, Hamas did make overtures towards what scholar Devorah Margolin calls the group’s more “centrist” positioning, taking a step away from the philosophy of the Brotherhood and even propagating human rights through its public outreach programme using the social media site Twitter (now known as ‘X’). Late last month, Israeli officials assessed that Hamas, in fact, wished to avoid a full-scale war. However, that doesn’t hold true anymore, and Hamas has clearly chosen a path of escalation. Despite comparisons to ISIS and Al Qaeda, for now, Hamas remains tightly bound to the Palestinian issue and the Middle East’s geopolitics.
A few days after PM Modi’s tweet, India’s Ministry of External Affairs reiterated this stand on no tolerance for terror, while also reiterating the continuation of India’s historical support towards a two-state solution.
Despite Hamas’s elevation in the scale of global terrorism, banning it by a country like India is much more complex. The last major international and transnational terrorist group banned by India’s Ministry of Home Affairs was ISIS, in 2015. India uses the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967 (UAPA) to proscribe such groups in such lists. As of March 2023, a total of 44 organisations were on this list in India, a mix of Islamist, far-left (Maoist), pro-Khalistan groups along with other secessionist movements, particularly from the North East of the country. The UAPA itself 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. However, even from the point of view of mere posturing, the politics of adding Hamas to such listings in India 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. Nonetheless, there is a growing need to refrain from attaching the idea of “resistance” to Hamas. This hyphenation has engulfed any idea of differentiation between Hamas and pro-Palestine sentiments, ultimately undermining the Palestinian point of view itself, despite an emboldening of the same by some of Hamas’s foreign patrons. Achieving a de-hyphenation will require an active political tract between interlocutors of Israel and Palestine, which at present does not exist.
Support for Palestinians is consistent across Muslim populations, including in India, home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world.
Israel finds itself in a position where retaliation may well be a requirement, not necessarily to pacify its own grieving population, but more importantly to restore a sense of security back to the state after Hamas broke through a much-lionised perception it had built over the decades, that Israeli security, strategy, and technology is invincible in front of its adversaries. The future of this conflict may be long-winded and extremely turbulent for the entire Middle East as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aims for a tactical “end” of Hamas while the region’s vision of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ collide.
Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with Strategic Studies programme. His research focuses on Indias relations with West Asia specifically looking at the domestic political dynamics ...
Read More +
PREV
