British lawyers representing Hamas have today submitted a legal case to the UK home secretary challenging the movement’s designation as a terror group and calling for Hamas to be deproscribed.
In the filing, the group argues that the UK should recognise Hamas as a Palestinian resistance movement engaging in a struggle for self-determination.
Fronting the application for the organisation is Dr Mousa Abu Marzouk, the head of International Relations and Legal Office of the Political Bureau.
The client’s application situates the significance of bringing such an application in the UK due to the historic and continued role the British government has played in the dispossession of the Palestinian people. pic.twitter.com/OW1nckVuAf
— Riverway Law (@riverwaylaw) April 9, 2025
The filing is significant due to the UK’s historic and continued role in the dispossession of the Palestinian people, Riverway Law – which has filed the case – said in tweets.
“For more than a century, the British State has been responsible for colonisation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine. From the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the Nakba of 1948 and all the way up to its present complicity in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the British State has played a critical role in the persecution of the Palestinian people,” Hamas’ application states.
It adds that Hamas is “an organised resistance movement that exercises the right of the Palestinian people to resist Zionism and colonisation, occupation, apartheid and, genocide carried out in its name.”
The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and the UK government are invited by the application “to depart from their morally and legally indefensible policy of siding with the Zionist oppressor against the oppressed people of Palestine.” Particularly in light of the Interantional Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that it is plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide.
The filing adds “that Hamas’s continued proscription is contrary to Britain’s obligations under international law. This includes their obligation to not be complicit in a genocide, crimes against humanity, and apartheid, but also to bring an end to the unlawful occupation and respect the dignity of the Palestinian people.”