A Turkey-based lobbying network with ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is working to recruit European politicians to support anti-Israel policies, according to a new investigative report.

NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations, published a report last week on the expansion of the League of Parliamentarians for Al-Quds and Palestine (LP4Q).

This political lobby network, which was established in 2015 and includes about 1,500 parliamentarians from around the world, is growing its influence across several European countries.

Vincent Chebat, senior researcher at NGO Monitor, authored the report, which exposes the dysfunction in the ways interest groups operate within European parliaments. He noted that the information about LP4Q’s connections to Hamas and the involvement of highly controversial European representatives in a lobby group backed by Turkey and Qatar was easily accessible.

“The lack of basic vetting is remarkable,” he told The Algemeiner. “It is not surprising that far-left MPs, some belonging to parties that have repeatedly refused to recognize Hamas as a terrorist entity, were involved in establishing this network.”

Since 2023, LP4Q members have met with current and former members of parliaments across Europe and activists in the European Parliament, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, the UK, Ireland, Scotland, and Finland.

The organization is also “preparing to expand” its activities to Portugal, the Netherlands, and eastern Europe.

LP4Q describes itself as an organization established “at the initiative of parliamentarians who support Palestinian rights.”

Last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an outspoken supporter of Hamas and a fierce critic of Israel, said that “the League of Parliamentarians for al-Quds has become the voice of the Palestinian issue at the global level.”

Michele Piras, a former Italian member of parliament and current LP4Q board member, leads the group’s expansion in Europe and has reportedly engaged with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization that participated in Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to NGO Monitor.

Last year, LP4Q’s European Network held its first meeting at the French National Assembly, bringing together 20 parliamentarians from several European countries to discuss, as they described, “the pressing need for Europe to take decisive action to halt the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

“Participants advocated for measures such as the cessation of military cooperation with Israel, an arms embargo, an immediate ceasefire, and the provision of humanitarian aid to civilians,” LP4Q wrote in a statement.

“Additionally, support was voiced for pursuing legal avenues, including actions before the International Court of Justice, to ensure severe condemnation of Israeli crimes,” the statement continued.

During the meeting, members also argued for “the recognition of an independent Palestinian State … and the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people.”

NGO Monitor reported that 160 current and former European parliamentarians signed a petition outlining their positions on the French communist website L’Humanité as part of the European Network’s launch. The signatories included 99 French, 23 Italian, 12 Belgian, and 14 Spanish MPs, senators, and MEPs (member of European Parliament).

Until its expansion to Europe, LP4Q was originally composed of members of parliament from Muslim countries, with at least two of its board members linked to Hamas and having been sanctioned by the US government.

For example, LP4Q President Hamid bin Abdullah Al-Ahmar, a Yemeni businessman, is considered one of Hamas’s most prominent international supporters, according to the US Treasury Department. He also played a key role in Hamas’s investment portfolio, which managed over $500 million worth of assets at its peak.

In 2021, Al-Ahmar met now-deceased Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to discuss “the political developments related to the Palestinian issue, the dangers facing it, ways to confront them, and the required national, regional, and international work strategies, especially within the parliamentary framework represented by the Parliamentarians for Jerusalem Association.”

Other LP4Q members and officials also have ties to Hamas. For example, board member Sayed Salem Abu-Msameh has been described as “one of the founders of Hamas” and was reportedly sentenced by Israel to 12 years in prison for helping to establish the terrorist group’s military wing.

LP4Q board vice presidents Hasan Turan, a Turkish member of parliament, and Ahmed Kharchi, an Algerian member of parliament, have also been linked to Hamas, with Turan reportedly facilitating high-level meetings between senior Hamas leaders and Turkish political elites.

According to NGO Monitor, LP4Q already has influence in Muslim states, including Qatar, as well as in Africa and South America, through its observer membership in the Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States (PUIC), the African Parliamentary Union (APU), the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), and the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union.

As for LP4Q’s finances, NGO Monitor explained that the Turkey-based lobbying network is not transparent about its sources of funding, and the amounts related to its agreements remain undisclosed.

In 2021, LP4Q signed a “protocol cooperation” with a Turkish governmental institution, the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities. That same year, it agreed with the state-run news agency Anadolu “to engage and coordinate in order to serve the Palestinian and the cause of Jerusalem in the media and to confront the disinformation and falsification campaigns of the Israeli media machine.”

The Algemeiner reached out to LP4Q for comment for this story but did not receive a response.

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