The European Foreign Affairs Council will adopt on Monday in Brussels “a regime of sanctions against Palestinian Hamas”, the deputy spokesperson for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday, in parallel with the conflict with Israel. “It is a sanctions regime which targets individuals and transfers of funds,” said its deputy spokesperson Christophe Lemoine during a press briefing at the Quai d’Orsay.
It targets Hamas and some of its cadres involved in the unprecedented attacks on October 7 against southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, which left 1,140 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count at based on official Israeli figures. Some 250 people were also taken hostage, and 132 are still in Gaza, of whom at least 27 were killed, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Around a hundred were released during a truce at the end of November.
Hamas leader placed on EU ‘terrorist’ list
The EU had already added Yahya Sinouar, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza, considered to be the architect of the October 7 attack against Israel, to its “terrorist” list on Tuesday. Since this decision by the Twenty-Seven, Yahya Sinouar has been subject to a sanctions regime involving a freezing of funds and financial assets that he holds in the EU and a ban on any European operator from financing them.
The EU had previously included in December two senior officials from Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa, on its blacklist sanctioning people or organizations involved in “terrorist” acts. Hamas, as an organization, is already part of it. The Palestinian Islamist movement is considered a terrorist group by the EU but also by many countries including the United States, Canada and Israel.
In retaliation for October 7, Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007. According to Hamas, nearly 24,500 people, the vast majority women, children and adolescents, have since been killed in Israeli military operations. in the Palestinian territory, where the UN fears a “risk of famine” and “deadly epidemics”.