The six-page Document of General Principles and Policies unveiled Monday by Hamas, accepts a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders while refusing to recognise Israel.
The document underscores the Palestinian Islamist movement’s right to armed resistance against Israel.
But it says its struggle is not against Jews because of their religion but against Israel as an occupier.
Here are some key extracts from the English-language text of the document:
- “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity.”
- “Without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967… to be a formula of national consensus.”
- “Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds”.
- “Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage.”
Read the full article by AFP at SBS.