![A masked militant from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, a military wing of Hamas, in Gaza.](/web/20170505061953im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/x/9/t/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvx10t.png/1493731562147.jpg)
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that has authority over the population of the Gaza Strip, released a new manifesto on Monday moderating its position toward Israel. It includes new statements on borders, its relationship with Islamist groups and on the Jewish people. What does it all mean?
Is it important that Hamas has issued a new statement of principles?
For years, the opposition of Western powers to dealing with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has rested on three planks: its conduct of armed violence and terrorism against Israel; its refusal to honour the political commitments made by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in the Oslo accords and beyond; and its refusal to recognise the existence of Israel.
The Hamas charter was issued in 1988, at a time when there was no peace process, no international recognition of a Palestinian people, and in the middle of a massive Israeli crackdown in the occupied territories in which soldiers brutally beat, imprisoned and tortured thousands of people living under its military rule. The charter's tone was apocalyptic and relied heavily on interpretations of Islamic scripture and European anti-Semitic texts to cast the conflict as part of an eternal struggle between Muslims and Jews. Over time it has become an additional obstacle to Hamas sitting in any diplomatic forum that involves Western nations, for whom anti-Semitism has since World War II been regarded as beyond the pale.
Both the PLO and Hamas began as movements which rejected both the legitimacy and the continued existence of Israel as a state, a position enshrined in their respective charters. So when the PLO came in from the diplomatic cold, it became necessary for its charter to be revised. Those parts of the charter which sat at odds with the vision of a two-state solution were formally abrogated by a vote of the PLO's national council in April 1996, but Israeli critics maintain that since no new charter was formulated at that time, this vote was a sham.
![The Israeli settlement of Revava, near the West Bank city of Nablus.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170505061953im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/i/l/y/l/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1482869519652.png)
The Israeli settlement of Revava, near the West Bank city of Nablus. Photo: AP
Why has Hamas issued this statement of principles now?
The main reason is that its chief political rival, Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is about to visit Washington for talks with US President Donald Trump. The new document, which began to attract international attention in March, seeks to question the ability of Abbas and the movement he heads to act as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Fatah has been declining in popularity among Palestinians for years now and Abbas needs a diplomatic breakthrough if its political position is to be salvaged.
But Hamas is also struggling to keep its head above water. The Arab Spring of 2011 damaged its ties with its long-standing state patrons, Syria and Iran, since it was unwilling to support either of those regimes in a war against Syria's Sunni majority.
Its hope that its historical affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, which came to power in democratic elections in Egypt at that time, would fill the gap proved misguided; the Brotherhood kept Hamas at arm's length diplomatically before being ousted in the 2013 coup by Egypt's military, which considers its financial and political ties to the United States and Israel to be more important than the rights of Palestinians.
The new charter makes it clear that Hamas remains committed to armed struggle, which it regards as a defining prerogative of a people who aspire to statehood and liberation from foreign occupation. But that also means that Hamas is aware of the impending threat of renewed conflict with Israel.
In today's war-torn Middle East, Hamas also finds itself pitted against - and linked to - Islamist movements that are more militant and more theologically extreme than itself. This places pressure on it to show that its own moves in the diplomatic sphere are actually productive.
![Palestinians, who get only several hours of electricity a day, sit around a fire outside their home in Gaza City.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170505061953im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/x/9/s/e/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1493700504083.png)
Palestinians sit around a fire outside their home in Gaza City. Electricity supplies in Gaza are limited. Photo: AP
Does it represent a significant shift?
Not really. Hamas is often identified in Western media coverage with uncompromising rejection of Israel, but as leading Israeli peace negotiator Shlomo Ben-Ami pointed out more than a decade ago, its political activity has always been marked by pragmatism.
The decision by Hamas to run in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections of January 2006 - which it won, having boycotted all previous elections to the assembly - was itself a sign of accommodation both with the Palestinian Authority created by the Oslo accords and with the fact of that authority's geographical limits (though crucially, for all Palestinian parties those limits include occupied East Jerusalem). It also showed that, unlike more radical Islamist movements, Hamas was willing to take part in a democratic process, which in turn required it to adjust to the positions of Palestinian voters.
While Palestinian public opinion is of course fluid, one of its common themes in the decades since the Oslo accords were signed is that concessions by the PLO on armed struggle and recognition of Israel have not resulted in a reciprocal recognition of Palestinian sovereignty and statehood. Those concessions are thus viewed as mistakes, and Hamas' refusal to abandon the same "bargaining chips" without first securing historic concessions from Israel is seen by many Palestinians - even those who do not support Hamas - as a wise and cautious stance that is not set in ideological concrete but can be altered when circumstances dictate.
After its 2006 election victory, Hamas went on to indicate that it was prepared to acknowledge Israel's existence de facto, though without giving Israel de jure recognition, a shift which Israel dismissed at the time. It is a position that the movement's outgoing leader Khalid Meshaal has maintained since then, and is in essence the same as that Sinn Fein espoused with regard to the conflict in Northern Ireland: that it is prepared to accept current political realities while continuing to aspire to a vision beyond that of two separate political entities in the Holy Land.
![Hamas leaders and supporters in Gaza City listen to Khaled Mashaal, the outgoing Hamas leader in exile, launch the new document from Doha, Qatar, on Monday.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170505061953im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/x/0/w/v/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1493688742963.png)
Hamas supporters in Gaza City listen to Khalid Meshaal, the outgoing Hamas leader in exile, launch the new document from Doha, Qatar, on Monday. Photo: AP
Who is likely to support this move?
The new charter was announced in Doha, the capital of Qatar, which gives a clear indication of its main sponsor. However Qatar alone cannot form a consensus over new diplomatic moves in the Middle East.
The decision to formally sever ties with the Muslim Brotherhood is a clear attempt to gain favour with Egypt and through it Saudi Arabia, both of whom are understood to have the ear of the new US administration.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi recently put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back into Donald Trump's field of vision, and both he and the Saudis are likely to encourage the White House to revisit the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which among other things proposes region-wide recognition of Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal to the boundaries that existed on the eve of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Is it likely to change anything?
The major question now is whether anyone in the Western world or Israel still loves the two-state solution enough to make a concerted effort to save it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who made opposition to a second state part of his election pitch, has often expressed opposition to the 2002 Arab initiative, and he now presides over a coalition government in which key partners not only regard all talk of two states as effectively over but which has promoted and passed laws that allow Israel to steal the territory that would be the basis for any Palestinian state.
Moreover, successive Israeli governments have rejected any proposal to return to the 1967 lines, characterised decades ago by leading Israeli diplomat Abba Eban as "Auschwitz borders".
Donald Trump, meanwhile, has fallen short of endorsing a two-state solution since becoming President, and the Republican Party removed all mention of that formula from its 2016 manifesto, a move for which Trump's choice as ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, subsequently took credit. Some Republicans in Congress have even decided that the time for negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians is over, and that the best hope for peace lies in a final settlement of the conflict imposed by Israel on a "defeated" and subject Palestinian population.
Confronted by such obstacles, the new Hamas charter is unlikely to reverberate in the corridors of power. But that will merely reinforce the conviction of Palestinians and their supporters around the world that the peace process as a whole is a shell game designed to suit only one of its participants.
Maher Mughrabi is Foreign Editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
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