Germany has announced a complete ban on the activities of the Palestinian group Hamas and ordered the disbanding of a pro-Palestine group accused of spreading anti-Israel and anti-Semitic ideas.

In a statement on Thursday, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said she implemented a formal ban on activity by or in support of Hamas, which is already designated as a “terrorist” organisation in the country.

“With Hamas, I have today completely banned the activities of a terrorist organisation whose aim is to destroy the state of Israel,” Faeser said.

A Hamas official in Lebanon said the move showed that the country was in partnership with Israel on crimes against Palestinian people.

“This prompts us to question whether the German political mentality is a Holocaust mentality that affects all peoples and is not limited to one party or another,” Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, said in a news conference on Thursday.

Faeser said she also is banning and dissolving the German branch of the Samidoun network, which she said “supports and glorifies” groups including Hamas.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had announced that the government would take action against both groups on October 12.

Samidoun was behind an October 7 action in which a group of people handed out pastries in a Berlin street in celebration of Hamas’s attack on Israel. At least 1,400 people were killed in the attack, most of whom were civilians, according to Israeli officials.

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