On Sunday, I wrote about the six month anniversary of the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. I repeated there my concern that Israel’s attempt to defeat Hamas by conventional military means in an urban area is likely to fail. We are already seeing the enormous cost of the conflict in Palestinian lives and wider suffering. At the same time even if Hamas itself were completely eliminated as an entity, the underpinning ideology of hatred would remain and indeed, I fear that this conflict is leading to its further entrenchment.
The battle for ideas is crucial and that’s why people need to fully understand the exact nature of Hamas’ mission. The original Hamas charter of 1988 states in its preamble
“This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.”
This made it clear that Hamas’ founding motivation was a struggle against the Jewish people and combined with the aim of eliminating Israel as an entity means that at heart it is both antisemitic and genocidal in its intent.
In 2017, Hamas issued a new document head “General Principles and Policies.” Some people have argued that this replaces the 1988 charter and therefore refutes accusations that Hamas is antisemitic and genocidal because it clarifies the organisations’ aims as being opposition against the Zionist project rather than the Jews and the creation of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders rather than the complete elimination of Israel.
There are two problems with this claim. First of all, the document does not rescind the 1988 charter nor recognise and apologise for the antisemitism and incitement to genocide that it included. Rather, it suggests the scope of Hamas’ ambitions at that particular time.
Second, we need to look at what the document does say. On Jews and Zionism, Hamas say:
“Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”[1]
However, in article 17, they go on to say:
“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 6 to their heritage.”[2]
First notice the reference to “The Jewish Problem” which treats the Jewish people, their existence and an identity as a problem for others to deal with. Secondly that the problem is identified as a “European” matter. This linked with Hamas’ insistence that the Zionists are external, colonial invader replays another antisemitic trope, namely that modern day Israelis are not the true descendants of the land’s former inhabitants but are solely and purely of European origin.
With regards to the future of Israel, the document does state that 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, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”[3]
However, the first part of that article insists:
“Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea”[4]
Throughout the document, Hamas are clear that they reject the right of Israel to exist at all, that they consider a two state solution as unacceptable and that recognition of a Palestinian State based on the Palestinian Authority borders (Gaza and the West Bank) should be seen as an interim, first stage towards the complete elimination of Israel.
As I said at the start, this document is not a departure from or repudiation of the 1988 charter but rather indicates an acceptance of more limited objectives at a particular time for pragmatic reasons.
Hamas remains an antisemitic terrorist organisation committed to genocide and ethnic cleansing.
This point is pertinent to recent discussions about genocide and the ICJ case of South Africa V Israel. On October 7th, an attack was launched by Hamas that included adduction, exposure, rape and murder of Jewish people. This attack was carried out by an organisation with a stated aim of wiping out Israel and a nation. In other words, under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, October 7th was such an act. Not only Israel but also others in the region including the UN therefore have a responsibility both to respond to October 7th appropriately to bring the perpetrators to justice and to do all in their powers to prevent further genocidal acts including attempted genocide, incitement to genocide and conspiracy to commit genocide.
This is the argument which needs to be made consistently and persistently by those who recognise that dealing with the threat posed by Hamas is longterm.
[1] Article 16.
[2] Article 17.
[3] Article 20
[4] Article 20.
Faithroots 