UK-based Al Quds newspaper urges Hamas to never compromise

The Al Quds newspaper (Arabic) has an editorial urging Hamas not to give in to Western pressure to recognize Israel.

It notes that President Obama and Turkish President Gul have urged Hamas to give up its core principle of rejecting Israel's existence.

These statements can only be explained as a concerted pressure campaign to push the Hamas movement to abandon the most important point in its Charter, which is the refusal to recognize Israel, under the pretext of advancing the peace process based on the two-state solution going forward.

We do not know how well Hamas can face these pressures. Publicly, the movement rejected in all its literature and the statements of its officials any recognition of Israel and its occupation of historic Palestine and its holy sites, but the same time offered a truce could last for thirty years in the event of a independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and the return of Palestinian refugees.

The Palestine Liberation Organization came under similar pressure which led eventually to the Oslo accords and the recognition of the State of Israel and renunciation of terrorism or armed struggle and the adoption of two-state solution and peaceful negotiations as the only way to get to an independent Palestinian state.

...After about 18 years of negotiations on the basis of two-state solution, a Palestinian state is still elusive, and more dangerously, the encroachment of settlements in the West Bank did not stop.

Non-recognition of Israel is the most important point in the Charter of the movement 'Hamas.' Do not give it away for free in response to U.S. pressure, in order to sit down with some U.S. or European officials. It's a trap had been carefully prepared to dump the backbone ideology of the movement, which brought her the basic respect for the Palestinian people and win in the last legislative elections, especially that any non-recognition has been deepened by upholding the option of resistance and practical application on the ground.

...We hope that the 'Hamas' can learn from the lessons of the degrading treatment suffered by the PLO before being dragged or falling into the trap of not only recognizing Israel, but also of Israel being a Jewish state.