While a draft version of Hamas’ new charter has raised questions over whether the movement would explicitly accept a Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders, the document will make clear that "our rivalry is with the occupation who occupied our land," Hamas official Ahmad Yousif told Ma’an on Sunday.Avi Issacharoff in Times of Israel writes:
The text of the new agenda -- which is to revise the Hamas charter for the first time since it was declared in 1988 -- was leaked by Lebanese news site Al-Mayadeen Sunday evening.
The Jewish people can finally breathe a sigh of relief. The new Hamas charter, set to be published in the coming days, will reportedly not include racist rhetoric against Jews akin to that in the original version, which made reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.I reported over a month ago (and again later) that Hamas never characterized this as a charter, and in fact Hamas leader Salah al Bardawil said explicitly "This new document of the Hamas organization will never be considered to constitute an alternative to the organization's founding charter."
Rather, only statements negating Zionism and the State of Israel have made it into the updated charter, according to a draft leaked to the Lebanon-based news outlet al-Mayadeen this week.
If you read the Al Medayeen article that leaks the new manifesto, it also does not use the word "charter". It calls it a "political document."
And there is essentially nothing in the new document that contradicts the Hamas charter, if you read it with a critical eye instead of through the lens of wishful thinking that journalists too often have. The emphasis is different, the style is different, but the principles are the same: the entire land of "Palestine" is a Muslim land and Jews have no rights to be there except as second-class citizens.
This quote from the original charter, for example, is perfectly consistent with this new manifesto:
The manifesto says "[Hamas] will continue the resistance and jihad to liberate Palestine as a legitimate right and a duty and an honor for all our people and our nation."
All the rest is spin.
There is no difference. Just because Hamas now says that they aren't targeting Jews who support Hamas' aims does not mean that they have deviated from the charter. .
Even the 1988 charter emphasized that Hamas was against "Zionism" and the Jewish part was peripheral. Here is part of what it said:
Hamas can easily claim that the reference to "warmongering Jews" only refer to Zionists, that he Protocols are for the Zionists. And they will never disavow the hadith against Jews.
World Zionism, together with imperialistic powers, try through a studied plan and an intelligent strategy to remove one Arab state after another from the circle of struggle against Zionism, in order to have it finally face the Palestinian people only. Egypt was, to a great extent, removed from the circle of the struggle, through the treacherous Camp David Agreement. They are trying to draw other Arab countries into similar agreements and to bring them outside the circle of struggle.
The Islamic Resistance Movement calls on Arab and Islamic nations to take up the line of serious and persevering action to prevent the success of this horrendous plan, to warn the people of the danger eminating from leaving the circle of struggle against Zionism. Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.
Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason, and cursed be he who does that. "for whoso shall turn his back unto them on that day, unless he turneth aside to fight, or retreateth to another party of the faithful, shall draw on himself the indignation of Allah, and his abode shall be hell; an ill journey shall it be thither." (The Spoils - verse 16). There is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion. The alternative is loss of one's country, the dispersion of citizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction of religious values. Let every person know that he is responsible before Allah, for "the doer of the slightest good deed is rewarded in like, and the does of the slightest evil deed is also rewarded in like."
The Islamic Resistance Movement consider itself to be the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism and a step on the road. The Movement adds its efforts to the efforts of all those who are active in the Palestinian arena. Arab and Islamic Peoples should augment by further steps on their part; Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should also do the same, since all of these are the best-equipped for the future role in the fight with the warmongering Jews.
In other words, you cannot find a single part of the 1988 Hamas charter that Hamas will now disavow.
The "new" claim of Hamas accepting a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza does not mean that they accept Israel in any way, shape or form. It means that, like Arafat, they want to destroy Israel in stages. And Hamas has been officially saying this for years anyway.
Unlike Fatah, Hamas tries to be very careful not to explicitly lie. They have been very consistent in their positions since 1988. It is a shame that the "experts" are so credulous to believe that when Hamas changes its style it has also changed its substance.