What's Behind Hamas' New Charter

Whats behind Hamas new charter?
Members of Hamas in Gaza watch a televised press conference by

the movements leader Khaled Meshaal, who is in Doha, Qatar,
outlining a new political document, 1 May.Mohammed AsadAPA
images
Ali Abunimah-2 May 2017

Leaders of Hamas released a document outlining their guiding
principles at a press conference in the Qatari capital Doha on
Monday.
Much coverage focused on the documents acceptance of the
1967 boundary as the basis for establishing a Palestinian state
alongside Israel. The document also includes pronouncements on
how Hamas views the roots of the conflict, the role of resistance
and its position towards Jews.
It aims to reposition Hamas as part of a Palestinian national
consensus and as an interlocutor which can eventually be part of
an internationally brokered political resolution.
The document attempts to do this while not compromising basic
principles, an exercise that leads to some apparent
contradictions.
Hamas also aims to assert its independence from the Muslim
Brotherhood, the Islamist movement founded almost a century
ago in Egypt and which is viewed as an enemy by several regional
regimes.
With an eye to international opinion, Hamas released its
Document of General Principles and Policies in
official Arabic and English versions.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said the new document had been
two years in the making, but it is really the culmination of internal
debates that go back more than a decade.
Jews are not the enemy
Hamas leaders have long recognized that the groups founding
charter, written by one man in 1988, served as an impediment to
political outreach within and beyond Palestine.
Few would dispute that the worst aspect of the original charter
was its unabashedly anti-Jewish language. Borrowing from classic
European anti-Semitism, it even cites as a reference the Tsarist
anti-Semitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Even if this long ago ceased to reflect Hamas leaders thinking,
these odious statements served as reliable weapons in Israels
anti-Palestinian propaganda arsenal.
By contrast, the new document states: Hamas affirms that its
conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of
their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews
because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists
who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly
identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and
illegal entity.
This brings Hamas into line with the historic position of the
Palestinian national movement. As Palestine Liberation
Organization chairman Yasser Arafat stated in his 1974 speech to
the United Nations, We do distinguish between Judaism and
Zionism. While we maintain our opposition to the colonialist
Zionist movement, we respect the Jewish faith.
Meshaal had already made a similar statement during his 2012
visit to the Gaza Strip. We do not fight the Jews because they are
Jews, he said. We fight the Zionist occupiers and aggressors.
And we will fight anyone who tries to occupy our lands or attacks
us.
Anti-colonial struggle
The original charter characterizes the problem in Palestine as
rooted in Muslim-Jewish religious strife and describes the land of
Palestine as an Islamic waqf, or endowment.
But in his 2007 book Hamas: A History from Within, scholar Azzam
Tamimi writes that Hamas leaders already felt that they needed to
move away from these concepts and seek more universal
language.
Tamimi notes that under the influence of such thinkers
as Abdelwahab Elmessiri, the problem of Palestine is today seen
by many Islamists, including leaders and members of Hamas,
simply as the outcome of a colonial project which could better be
explained in political, social or economic terms, than in terms of
religion.
The new document reflects this thinking: The Palestinian cause in
its essence is a cause of an occupied land and a displaced
people.
It also removes mention of Palestine as an Islamic waqf, affirming
rather that Palestine is a land whose status has been elevated by
Islam just as it has been in other religions. Palestine is the
birthplace of Jesus Christ, it states, and the resting place of
prophets.
Irish model?
In the new document, Hamas states that the establishment of
Israel is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of
the Palestinian people. It affirms that there will be no recognition
of the usurping Zionist entity or any concession on the right of
return for refugees.
Yet in seeming contradiction, it states: without compromising its
rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any
Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully
sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its
capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of
the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they
were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
In other words, Hamas is formally signing up to the two-state
solution at the very moment it is becoming clear that such an
outcome will not come about.
Putting that aside, a good analogy for Hamas balancing act would
be the Irish nationalist party Sinn Finsacceptance of the 1998
Belfast Agreement, which entailed entering a power-sharing
government in Northern Ireland, while simultaneously continuing
to reject partition.
In the wake of last years British vote to exit the European Union,
Sinn Fin is reviving its campaign to abolish Northern Ireland and
bring about a single state on the island of Ireland, an outcome the
Belfast Agreement allows if a majority backs it in a referendum.
Something similar has been articulated by Hamas leaders for
years. In a 2006 New York Times article, Hamas adviser Ahmed
Yousef proposed a long-term truce, or hudna, citing the Irish
peace process as a model for ending conflict without Palestinians
abandoning their positions. A years-long period of calm, he
argued, might create later the conditions for a durable political
settlement that do not exist now.
In 2009, Meshaal told The New York Times that his party had
accepted a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders including East
Jerusalem, dismantling settlements, and the right of return based
on a long-term truce.
The new document attempts a similar balancing act with respect
to internal Palestinian politics. It states that the 1993 Oslo accords
signed between the PLO and Israel violate the inalienable rights
of the Palestinian people and it strongly condemns as
collaboration the ongoing security coordination between
Israeli forces and the PA.
But Hamas also accepts the PA as a reality, arguing that it should

serve the Palestinian people and safeguard their security, their
rights and their national project. Hamas also calls for rebuilding
the PLO of which it is not currently a member on democratic
foundations.
Resistance
Since it won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, Hamas has
been subjected to discriminatory conditions by the so-
called Quartet the ad hoc grouping of EU, UN, US and Russian
officials who claim authority over the question of Palestine.
In order to be recognized as an interlocutor, Hamas is required to
renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept all previous
agreements.
Israel, meanwhile, is not required to recognize a Palestinian state
or any Palestinian rights; Israel continues to use violence, not just
with impunity but with weapons supplied by Quartet states; and
Israel routinely tramples signed agreements and international law
with its massive colonization of occupied Palestinian land.
In its new document, Hamas asserts that resistance, including
armed resistance, is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws
and by international norms and laws. Indeed, the right to armed
resistance against occupation is internationally recognized.
But it also reserves the right of our people to develop the means
and mechanisms of resistance.
Hamas adds: Managing resistance, in terms of escalation or de-
escalation, or in terms of diversifying the means and methods, is
an integral part of the process of managing the conflict and
should not be at the expense of the principle of resistance.
In other words, Hamas sees armed resistance as something to be
used or not used as circumstances dictate. If a political horizon
opens up, it can turn away from armed resistance without
conceding the right, just as other resistance and liberation
movements have done.
Transition
Israel, unsurprisingly, dismissed Hamas new document before it
had even been published, as a rebranding exercise designed to
fool the world.
The reality, however, is that despite their differences, both major
wings of the Palestinian national movement have expressed
varying degrees of readiness for an accommodation with Israel.
It is Israel that stands adamantly against any political process or
agreement that would place a limit on its voracious theft of
Palestinian land.
More than providing anything new, the Hamas document confirms
and enshrines long-term shifts in the movements thinking at a
moment when it is about to undergo a political transition
Meshaal announced last September that he would soon be
stepping down.
For all the significance that may have, it does not resolve the
basic problem afflicting the institutionalized Palestinian national
movement: neither Hamas, nor Fatah its rival headed by PA
leader Mahmoud Abbas has a vision to mobilize and unite
Palestinians in a struggle for their rights and land at a moment
when the two-state solution has become irrelevant.
Posted by Thavam

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Whats behind Hamas new charter?

Members of Hamas in Gaza watch a televised press conference by

Ali Abunimah-2 May 2017

But Hamas also accepts the PA as a reality, arguing that it should

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