GAZA CITY
Palestinian faction Hamas on Monday slammed assertions by an Egyptian court that it "lacked jurisdiction" to look into a lawsuit calling for the designation of Israel as a "terrorist state".
"Israel is an icon of terror in the region. This view does not need endorsement by an Egyptian court – or anyone else – to state it as a fact," the Palestinian group said in a statement.
"Israel's crimes are committed before all media outlets and before the entire world," it added.
Earlier Monday, the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to examine the case, a judicial source told Anadolu Agency.
He added that the court had noted that such a designation was a "matter of sovereignty" that could not be made via judicial channels.
In February, the same court designated Hamas itself as a "terrorist" group on claims that the group had carried out attacks in Egypt via tunnels linking the Sinai Peninsula to the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Hamas said that the Monday ruling "by the same court that labeled Hamas a terrorist organization runs contrary to facts and realities and runs contrary to the nation's conscience".
Cairo-Hamas relations have soured since the ouster of Mohamed Morsi – Egypt's first freely elected president – in July of 2013.
Since then, Egypt's government has tightened its already-firm grip on the Rafah border crossing – Gaza's only outlet to the outside world not under Israeli control.
The Egyptian media blames Hamas, an ideological offshoot of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, for a series of deadly attacks on security forces carried out since Morsi's ouster in mid-2013.
Hamas, for its part, has repeatedly denied the allegations.
