{"id":1314,"date":"2006-01-12T21:28:23","date_gmt":"2006-01-13T03:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=1314"},"modified":"2006-01-12T21:28:38","modified_gmt":"2006-01-13T03:28:38","slug":"hamas-drops-manifesto-call-for-israel-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=1314","title":{"rendered":"Hamas Drops Manifesto Call for Israel Destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take this “development”<\/a> with one freakin’ big grain of salt.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

The shift in emphasis comes as Hamas finds itself under pressure from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and from foreign governments to accept Israel’s right to exist and to end its violence if it wants to be accepted as a political partner in a future administration.<\/p>\n

The group is expected to emerge as the second largest party after Mr Abbas’s Fatah in the next Palestinian parliament. Opinion polls give it more than a third of the popular vote, built on a campaign against Fatah’s endemic corruption and mismanagement and failure to contain growing criminality, and by claiming credit for driving the Israeli army and settlers out of Gaza.<\/p>\n

But the manifesto continues to emphasise the armed struggle. “Our nation is at a stage of national liberation, and it has the right to act to regain its rights and end the occupation by using all means, including armed resistance,” it says.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is not a case of a leopard changing its spots. Rather, the leopard would simply not prefer to talk about its spots … for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Take this “development” with one freakin’ big grain of salt. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}