News

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/hamas-covenant-israel-attack-war-genocide/675602/

Some choice, direct quotes from the article:

The most relevant of the document’s 36 articles can be summarized as falling within four main themes

1. The complete destruction of Israel as an essential condition for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a theocratic state based on Islamic law (Sharia),

2. The need for both unrestrained and unceasing holy war (jihad) to attain the above objective,

3. The deliberate disdain for, and dismissal of, any negotiated resolution or political settlement of Jewish and Muslim claims to the Holy Land, and

4. The reinforcement of historical anti-Semitic tropes and calumnies married to sinister conspiracy theories.

Lest there be any doubt about Hamas’s sanguinary aims toward Israel and the Jewish people, the introduction goes on to explain:

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 is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps.

this part of the covenant stresses that:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight.

On May 1, 2017, Hamas issued a revised charter. Gone were the “vague religious rhetoric and outlandish utopian pronouncements” of the earlier document, according to analysis prepared for the Institute of Palestine Studies. Instead, the new charter was redolent of “straightforward and mostly pragmatic political language” that had “shifted the movement’s positions and policies further toward the spheres of pragmatism and nationalism as opposed to dogma and Islamism.” Nonetheless, the analyst was struck by “the movement’s adherence to its founding principles” alongside newly crafted, “carefully worded” language suggesting moderation and flexibility.

Israel immediately dismissed the group’s effort to promote a kinder, gentler image of its once avowedly bloodthirsty agenda. “Hamas is attempting to fool the world, but it will not succeed,” a spokesperson from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office predicted.

And I'd say they were right to do so given what Hamas has done since.

I am not saying Israel has clean hands. But painting Hamas as even open to a peaceful resolution is fraught.

the closest thing Palestinians have to a government

If this really is the "closest thing" to a government they have. Then I fully understand the desire to completely demolish their intolerant antisemitic society to make sure it never can even attempt to attack again.

Going to some other resources...

Approximately 60 percent of Palestinians (77% in the Gaza Strip and 46% in the West Bank), support armed attacks against Israelis within Israel as a means of ending the occupation, while 70% believe that a two-state solution is no longer practical or possible as a result of the expansion of Israeli settlements.

http://pcpsr.org/en/node/912 (from last year)

The whole thing is a mess because Israel was created by colonizers. It seems the two are now locked into a conflict where only one state can survive. The Gaza strip is pretty clearly going to continue to be a threat to Israel that peace talks or a "two state" solution cannot resolve.