Palestinian media are reporting that Hamas will be focusing its efforts on convincing European countries to remove the organization from the EU terror list and on recruiting Arab, Palestinian and Muslim communities in Europe for their support of Hamas in Europe. According to a Maan News Agency report:
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Published Sunday 21/04/2013 (updated) 23/04/2013 14:37 BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) – The Hamas movement has been holding a series of closed-door meetings in the Qatari capital of Doha to distribute positions on the new members of its politburo, says senior leader Ahmed Yousif.
Yousif told Ma’an Sunday that the task would be completed this week.
He highlighted that Hamas’ leader in Gaza and deputy chief of the movement’s politburo Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Doha to join the meetings and to discuss reconciliation with Fatah. He is also expected to discuss the special Arab League summit the Emir of Qatar suggested during the latest Doha summit to address Palestinian reconciliation.
Names and positions of new politburo members will be announced soon, added Yousif.
The new Hamas politburo, added Yousif, is expected to focus on benefiting from the Arab, Palestinian and Muslim communities in Europe to recruit support to Hamas in Europe, and try and take the movement’s name off terrorism lists.
‘Hamas will focus on convincing European countries to take its name out of the terrorism list. Hamas is certain that the US will not agree to take its name off the list. However, European countries set only one condition to do that — avoiding martyrdom attacks inside Israel, and Hamas hasn’t carried out any attack since 2004.’
Ahmed Yousif is a former leader in the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas infrastructure during the 1990’s which was also led by individuals subsequently employed by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), another part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. According to an investigative research report:
A March 2004 Washington Post article identifies the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR) as an organization which “federal prosecutors and congressional investigators have linked it to…terrorist groups, primarily the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, court records and interviews show.” The association with the USAR and Hamas stems originally from the 1993 Israeli interrogation of Arab-American Hamas operative Mohamed Salah who according to news reports said: “the political command of Hamas in the United States is at the United Association for Studies and Research, in Springfield, Va. He identified the Hamas leader in the United States as the head of the institute, Ahmed Youssef, a writer whose code name he said was Abu Ahmed.” The current CAIR Director of Research, Mohammad Nimer, was a USAR board member during 1992-1993 when Hamas political leader Musa Abu Marzook was also employed and current CAIR board member Nabil Sadoun helped found the UASR with Mr. Marzook.
The Hamas charter says that it is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine” and soon after Hamas took over the Gaza strip, Muslim Brotherhood representatives traveled to Gaza from Egypt through the newly-opened border to review Hamas military formations. A Hamas journalist has acknowledged the role that the “international Muslim Brotherhood” has played in providing funds for the purchase of weapons and Hamas is known to be supported financially and politically by the global Muslim Brotherhood. A Muslim Brotherhood spokesman revealed that a coalition of London-based Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, were behind the mass demonstrations staged to protest Israeli actions in the 2008 Gaza war and the Global Muslim Brotherhood and its Turkish affiliates were also intimately involved, along with the Turkish government, in the June 2010 Gaza flotilla that was involved in a violent altercation with Israeli naval forces.
