BICOM

The EU is expected to support a draft US resolution in the UN General Assembly condemning Hamas and its actions in Gaza.

Sweden’s UN ambassador, Olof Skoog, told reporters, “We don’t mind condemning Hamas. They deserve to be condemned”. Both the EU and US have banned Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

The draft resolution was amended, at the EU’s request, to include a clause stating that a future Israeli-Palestinian peace deal should be “in accordance with international law,” bearing in mind “relevant UN resolutions”. It did not make explicit mention of the two-state solution.

The vote is expected to take place on Monday and, if adopted, would be first time that the UN General Assembly has passed a resolution condemning Hamas.

The draft “condemns Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets into Israel and for inciting violence, thereby putting civilians at risk” and demands that Hamas and other militant actors “cease all provocative actions and violent activity”. Activities condemned include the use of resources by Hamas to launch missile attacks and to construct tunnels used to infiltrate Israel. Such resources could be used to meet the “critical needs of civilians”.

The draft resolution also calls on all parties to fully adhere to international humanitarian law and for Palestinian groups to take “concrete steps to reunite the Gaza Strip and the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority and ensure its effective functioning in the Gaza Strip”.

In response to the resolution, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told reporters that “the fact that people discuss Hamas in the UN is a win-win” but he criticised the UN for its perceived anti-Israeli bias. Danon said: “Every year, the United Nations adopts at least 20 resolutions specifically to condemn Israel. Not a single one of these resolutions or any General Assembly resolution at all has ever included Hamas.”

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh severely criticised the draft resolution in a letter to General Assembly President, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, and the assembly’s member states. In the letter Haniyeh wrote of Hamas’s “great anger and condemnation” towards the US and its proposed resolution for “adopting the Israeli narrative of the conflict” and providing “the necessary material and moral support for the Israeli occupation to continue its aggression against our people”.