Le Hamas et le Fatah concluent un partenariat au Caire. Transcript: Khaled Meshaal interview. Hamas' political leader, Khaled Meshaal, has told the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, that his organisation is ready to offer a long-term truce to Israel - as long as certain Palestinian rights are honoured.
Here is a full transcript of the interview. Q: Would Hamas renounce violence? A: When countries are free and you are independent, of course democracy does not go with violence. We would practise democracy peacefully without violence - but when there is occupation, there is no contradiction between democracy and what the West calls violence, which is in this case resistance. Violence in independent countries is totally rejected. Q: So does that mean then that you are not going to change the Hamas charter as the big donor countries have requested? Hamas drops call for destruction of Israel from manifesto. 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 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. 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".
The group is expected to emerge as the second largest party after Mr Abbas's Fatah in the next Palestinian parliament. Haniyeh: We will accept Palestinian state within '67 border. Hamas 2.0. For decades, Western decision-makers have viewed Hamas as a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy the state of Israel and thus will never accept a territorial compromise based on a two-state solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently reiterated that assessment in a July 14, 2009, speech in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, it also forms the basis of U.S. President Barack Obama's new approach to Middle East peacemaking. In his Cairo address, Obama refrained from labeling Hamas a "terrorist organization," but he urged Hamas to reform itself. "To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations," he declared, "Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist. " Hamas 2.0. For decades, Western decision-makers have viewed Hamas as a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy the state of Israel and thus will never accept a territorial compromise based on a two-state solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently reiterated that assessment in a July 14, 2009, speech in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, it also forms the basis of U.S. President Barack Obama's new approach to Middle East peacemaking. In his Cairo address, Obama refrained from labeling Hamas a "terrorist organization," but he urged Hamas to reform itself. "To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations," he declared, "Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist. " » Score one for ‘Hamaswood’ Middle East Strategy at Harvard.
From Matthew Levitt Hamas, which recently created a production company and released its first major film production glorifying the life of a master terrorist (view the Arabic trailer at the end of this post), has scored its first major public relations coup. In a new article on the website of Foreign Affairs, Michael Bröning (director of the East Jerusalem office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung) cites the group’s recent downplaying of the relevance of its own charter as a telltale sign that Hamas is turning around or even “growing up.” To be sure, the rhetoric of Hamas leaders has visibly changed in public statements. But in focusing on these statements alone, Bröning misses the real point: Hamas’s words have changed, but their actions have not.