Hamas terrorists in Gaza (file)
Hamas terrorists in Gaza (file)Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90

Hamas denounced on Saturday night the decision by an Egyptian court to declare it a terrorist organization, accusing Egypt of being “a friend of the Israeli occupation”.

According to the statement quoted by the Alresalah newspaper, Hamas said the ruling is “serious and shocking”.

The statement added that the ruling targets “the whole Palestinian people as well as the Palestinian resistance, making Egypt a friend of the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian people an enemy.”

Saturday’s ruling was directed at Hamas’s political wing, and it comes after Hamas’s “military wing”, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was designated as a terrorist organization by Egypt at the beginning of February.

Hamas has been the subject of a crackdown by Egyptian authorities ever since the military ousted former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

The military-led government that ousted Morsi has cracked down on Hamas, which it accuses of an attack on Egyptian police headquarters, and of planning church bombings in Sinai.

Most recently, Egypt accused Hamas of providing the weapons used by terrorists for two lethal attacks in El-Arish in October, in which dozens of soldiers were killed.

Egypt declared a state of emergency in the Sinai following that attack and began to create a buffer zone along the border with Gaza.