Israel’s Destruction Still Hamas’ Goal

The Fellowship  |  May 10, 2017

Last week – on Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, no less – Hamas released a new political charter. Upon the paper’s release, some wondered if the Gaza-based terrorist organization had softened its stance against Israel. No such luck, as The Times of Israel reports that Hamas’ leadership is making assurances that the destruction of the Jewish state is still its top priority:

Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar clarified Wednesday that his terror group’s new political program, which some interpreted as accepting the idea of a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, would not preclude Hamas from seeking to liberate all of historic Palestine, including Israel.

“If we liberate Palestine though the resistance until the 1967 borders, we will go directly to liberate the rest of Palestine and the territories of 1948, and there will be no negotiations,” Zahar said at a conference in Gaza addressing international reactions to the new policy document, according to the Hamas-linked al-Resalah news site.

Zahar was likely responding to hardline critics of Hamas’s new program, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group…

On Wednesday Zahar stressed that Hamas was not walking back its original principals, asserting, “If Hamas liberated 99.9% of the land of Palestine, it will not give up on the rest.”

He added: “We cannot religiously, morally or nationally give up on one inch of the land of Palestine.”