The LA Times reports today that the terrorist group Hamas has modified it’s original charter adding an amendment stating an interim goal of establishing a Palestinian state comprised of Gaza and the West Bank with Jerusalem as its capital.
However, the terror group did not remove the original charter language and has before stated the same such interim solution.
The charter states that "our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious" and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[2] and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.[3][4] It emphasizes the importance of jihad, stating in article 13, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."[5]
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In 2008, the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, stated that Hamas would agree to accept a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, and to offer a long-term truce with Israel.[7] In contrast to this, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar stated that any talk of the 1967 lines is "just a phase" until Hamas has a chance to "regain the land...even if we [Hamas] have to do so inch by inch."[8] Other Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyah and Khaled Meshaal have also stated repeatedly that "Palestine – from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, from its north to its south – is our land, our right, and our homeland. There will be no relinquishing or forsaking even an inch or small part of it,"[9] and that "we shall not relinquish the Islamic waqf on the land of Palestine, and Jerusalem shall not be divided into Western and Eastern Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a single united [city], and Palestine stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and from Naqoura [Rosh Ha-Niqra] to Umm Al-Rashrash [Eilat] in the south."[10][11]
The same is true with today’s modified charter as it “reasserts calls for armed resistance toward a “complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.””
The only path for Hamas to reach this goal of a Palestine from the river to the sea is by massive violence against the state of Israel as it is unlikely to voluntarily disband itself as a nation. The death and destruction it would take to reach this goal is unthinkable and unimaginable — yet it is still the only path Hamas sees and as such must be firmly opposed by all.