Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist group that has risen to international prominence in recent months, has now achieved the dubious distinction of having its own listing in the State Department’s annual report on global terrorism.
The report, “Patterns of Global Terrorism 1992,” released Friday, says that “various elements of Hamas have used both political and violent means, including terrorism, to pursue the goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel.”
Hamas, an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, was involved in the killing of an Israeli border guard late last year, which was one of the events leading to Israel’s decision in December to deport 415 Palestinians, most of whom were Hamas supporters.
Since then, the group has been in the news because of both the deportees and ongoing reports that Hamas has engaged in active fund raising here in the United States.
Syria, one of Israel’s negotiating partners in the Middle East peace talks, retained a place on the list of countries regarded by the United States as state sponsors of terrorism, along with Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea.
But the State Department views Iran and Iraq as far more dangerous havens for terrorists than Syria, which has tried in recent years to have its name removed from the list. Congress bars U.S. aid to any country supporting terrorism.
“There is no evidence that Syrian officials have been directly involved in planning or executing terrorist attacks outside Lebanon since 1986,” the report says, “but Syria continues to provide support and safe haven to a number of groups that engage in international terrorism.”
It adds that “Syria has at times restrained the activities of these groups.”
The report says that Syria and Syrian-controlled areas of Lebanon are the site of training camps and bases for such terrorist groups as the Abu Nidal organization, Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
The report describes Iran as “the most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism in 1992, with over 20 acts in 1992 attributable to it or its surrogates.”
It links Iran to the March 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which the report calls the “deadliest act of terrorism in 1992.”
Hezbollah, an Islamic terrorist group described as “Iran’s most important client,” was responsible for the bombing, which killed 29 people and wounded 242.
SOME GOOD NEWS. TOO
There is also good news in the report. To begin with, the number of international terrorist incidents was down to 361 in 1992, from 567 the year before.
U.S. casualties from terrorist acts, the report says, were the lowest ever since the State Department began compiling such data in 1968. Only two Americans were killed in terrorist incidents. (The 1993 total is already higher, as a result of February’s World Trade Center bombing.)
A senior State Department official credited greater international cooperation and the decline of Eastern Europe as a terrorist sanctuary as important reasons for the decrease.
Americans continue to be the primary targets for terrorism. Nearly 40 percent of the 361 incidents last year targeted Americans or their property.
The report says there were 79 international terrorist incidents in the Middle East in 1992, the same number as the year before. Most of them were “Iraqi-sponsored attacks against U.N. personnel working in Iraq.”
Israel and the territories, the report says, suffered a “sharp increase in terrorism and violence” in late 1992.
The report says there were fewer infiltration attempts into Israel in 1992 (seven, compared to 20 the previous year) because of “stepped-up border security by Israeli, Egyptian, and Jordanian forces.”
The Palestinian uprising in the territories receives two paragraphs in the report, which describes the intifada as “primarily a civil insurrection that contains elements of terrorism in specific instances.”
Steven Emerson, a writer and terrorism expert, said that putting Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations will be meaningful only if the action has “some teeth attached.”
The United States, he said, should work more actively to protest support given to Hamas by such countries as Syria and Saudi Arabia, and should restrict Hamas operatives entering or working in the United States.
“The fact is, there hasn’t been a major protest” by the U.S. government in either of those areas, Emerson said.
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