A child at a Hamas rally. Photo: Wikipedia.

Once Hamas has its new leadership in place, a main order of business will be in benefiting from the Arab and Muslim communities in Europe to recruit support for the terror group on that continent, a senior Hamas leader has told Ma’an News Agency. The goal, according to Ahmed Yousif, is to remove the terror organization from terrorism lists and gain legitimacy in the eyes of the West.

“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,”  Yousif said.

The US, Canada and the EU all consider Hamas a terrorist organization.

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, Yousif told Ma’an.