ETA: When I first read the Guardian article, I carelessly did not look at the date, which is January 12, 2006, and so this is not so much a big deal now. Nonetheless, it is significant that Hamas has taken this position. I will write more about that in the post I am working on, which I mention at the bottom of this post.
From The Guardian:
Hamas has dropped its call for the destruction of Israel from its manifesto for the Palestinian parliamentary election in a fortnight, a move that brings the group closer to the mainstream Palestinian position of building a state within the boundaries of the occupied territories.
The Islamist faction, responsible for a long campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis, still calls for the maintenance of the armed struggle against occupation. But it steps back from Hamas’s 1988 charter demanding Israel’s eradication and the establishment of a Palestinian state in its place.
The manifesto makes no mention of the destruction of the Jewish state and instead takes a more ambiguous position by saying that Hamas had decided to compete in the elections because it would contribute to “the establishment of an independent state whose capital is Jerusalem”.
Here’s the hedging and the nuance, but I don’t think this changes the fact that this shift on Hamas’ part is still a very big deal:
Gazi Hamad, a Hamas candidate in the Gaza Strip, yesterday said the manifesto reflected the group’s position of accepting an interim state based on 1967 borders but leaving a final decision on whether to recognise Israel to future generations.
“Hamas is talking about the end of the occupation as the basis for a state, but at the same time Hamas is still not ready to recognise the right of Israel to exist,” he said. “We cannot give up the right of the armed struggle because our territory is occupied in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That is the territory we are fighting to liberate.”
But Mr Hamad said the armed resistance was no longer Hamas’s primary strategy. “The policy is to maintain the armed struggle but it is not our first priority. We know that first of all we have to put more effort into resolving the internal problems, dealing with corruption, blackmail, chaos. This is our priority because if we change the situation for the Palestinians it will make our cause stronger.
“Hamas is looking to establish a new political strategy in which all Palestinian groups will participate, not just dominated by Fatah. We will discuss the negotiation strategy, how can we run the conflict with Israel but by different means.”
I have been working on a longish post about the current Israeli invasion of Gaza, but now I need to go back and rewrite some, and I am glad for that.
I think you’re confused. This happened in 2006 not recently, they won the subsequent election which triggered 8 years of on and off war.
Thank you, Franz. You’re right. That’s what I get for reading things when I am so tired I am almost cross-eyed.
It’s…. sort of a big deal that they dropped it from their manifesto in 2006. But of course it will be the bigger deal if Hamas actually acts like it doesn’t want to destroy Israel–which of course it actually does, unlike other competing Palestinian governments and unlike many (most?) Palestinians.
Because, as you can see, the fact that a country’s government takes a position is not nearly as important as whether or not they follow through. Official positions are an important indicator of what countries think but they are obviously a less powerful indicator than what countries actually do. And the same applies to Israelis, of course.
If only W H Yale had found the bubbling crude there a century ago, it’s a totally different storyline now. With more dead bodies, but sacrificed to the omnipotent market.