The Hamas new charter, a draft of which reached Israeli media Sunday, offers contradictory views regarding the terrorist group’s embracing a 1967-border Palestinian State while concurrently calling for a war on Israel.
The new charter, revising and replacing the Hamas original 1988 document, was leaked to the Lebanese news site Al-Mayadeen Sunday.
The Ma’an news agency points out that while Point 19 of the charter accepts “the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state along June 4, 1967 lines, with the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes,” the document also rejects “any alternative to the liberation of Palestine completely from its sea to its river,” meaning from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
Indeed, the same document that seeks a recognized state ostensibly alongside 1948 Israel, also vows that Hamas “will not relinquish any part of the land of Palestine, no matter what the reasons, circumstances, and pressures could be, and no matter how long occupation may continue.”
Hamas official Ahmad Yousif told Al-Mayadeen that “Hamas accepted an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders as a matter of preserving Palestinian consensus,” but maintains its right to armed resistance.
Yousif confirmed to Ma’an on Sunday evening that the new charter continues to “legitimize all types of resistance and struggle against occupation.”
And while some Israeli news outlets have begun to celebrate the coming recognition of Israel by Hamas, Yousif made clear: “The charter does not recognize the Israeli occupation or breach our irrecoverable principles.”
So, calm down, nothing has changed.
Indeed, whomever bothered to actually read the new charter, would have discovered this statement:
“The fact that the Palestinian people were expelled from their land and displaced through the creation of the Zionist entity does not annul the Palestinian people’s right to all of their land, nor does that establish a legitimate right for the usurper Zionist entity to have this land.”
Still, if you are Jewish and not living in israel, you can breathe a sigh of relief: Hamas has no beef with you. The new charter distinguished between “the Jews as a People of the Book and as followers of a religion on one hand, and the occupation and the Zionist project on the other hand,” promising that “Hamas does not view the conflict with the Zionist project as a conflict with the Jews because of their religion.”