A news report by Reuters called the document a “policy shift” and Sky News said the “Palestinian Islamist group has dropped calls for the country’s destruction”.
A Wall Street Journal report said Hamas “formally accepts notion of a Palestinian state in territories Israel captured in 1967”.
Article 19 of the new document, however, makes clear that Hamas has no intention of giving up its aim of “taking back” all of current-day Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean coast. It reads: “Hamas refuses any alternative which is not the whole liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”
The document also confirms that Hamas is not renouncing violence or giving up the “armed struggle” against Israel.
The “new charter” is widely seen in Israel and sections of the Arab world as an exercise in rebranding to shore up political support for Hamas at home and abroad.
Funds flowing to Hamas from its main backers, Iran, Turkey and Qatar, are at an all-time low. Gaza continues to suffer from chronic water and electricity shortages and other global events, such as the war in Syria, have drawn attention away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Rather than a rejection of the fundamentalist values that underpin Hamas, the new document is an attempt to win friends, cash and positive publicity in the West.
