According to Brussels, the European Union (EU) placed asset freezes and visa bans on a number of companies and people on Friday on suspicion of funding the terrorist Islamist group Hamas in Palestine.
Following their attack on Israel on October 7, the European Union (EU) placed more sanctions on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In total, the bloc has placed three organisations and twelve people on its blacklist that are connected to extremists.
Three front firms that were utilised by important financier Hamza Abdelbasit to transfer money to the gang were among the most recent targets. According to an EU statement, these include two others with headquarters in Sudan and the Spanish real estate company Al Zawaya Group.
The person in charge of the group’s “Charitable Institutions Association,” a money exchanger who allowed transfers from Hamas supporter Iran, and the head of the organization’s “foreign investment activities” were also targeted, according to the report.
Additionally, the EU said that it was putting sanctions on Ali Morshed Shirazi, a top official in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who is in charge of Tehran’s relations with Palestinian organisations based in Lebanon.
The list also included top Hamas official Maher Rebhi Obeid, who was designated as “responsible for directing Hamas’ terrorist operatives in the West Bank.”
The assault
1,195 persons, primarily civilians, were killed in Hamas’s October 7 strike on southern Israel, according to an AFP count based on Israeli numbers. In addition, the militants took control of 116 hostages, 42 of whom the army claims are dead but who are still in Gaza.
Israel retaliated by launching a catastrophic military operation in Gaza, the home base of Hamas. Data from the health ministry in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, show that at least 37,765 people have died as a result of this, the majority of them civilians.
According to EU diplomats, the group ought to launch a second round of penalties against violent Israeli extremists operating in the West Bank, in response to the most recent sanctions imposed on Hamas.
The 27-nation EU has battled to come to a consensus about the Gaza War. As a result of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the organisation placed sanctions on two organisations and four “extremist” Israeli settlers in April.
