AFP Falsely Reports: Hamas Accepts State ‘Limited to 1967 Borders’
Influential wire service Agence France Presse falsely reported yesterday that Hamas’ May 1 policy document accepts a Palestinian state “limited to the 1967 borders” (“Gaza: Palestinian territory ravaged by war, poverty”).
In no way does the new Hamas document signal an acceptance of a Palestinian state “limited to the 1967 borders.” In fact, it says the exact opposite. The wording is:
Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, 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, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus. . . .
A real state of Palestine is a state that has been liberated. There is no alternative to a fully sovereign Palestinian State on the entire national Palestinian soil, with Jerusalem as its capital. (Emphases added.)
In an interview with Reuters, Hamas’ Mahmoud al-Zahar emphasized that the new document is a “mechanism” for Hamas’ pledge “to liberate all of Palestine.” Reuters reported:
One of Hamas’s most senior officials said on Wednesday a document published by the Islamist Palestinian group last week was not a substitute for its founding charter, which advocates Israel’s destruction.
Speaking in Gaza City, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a regular critic of Israel, said the political policy document announced in Qatar on May 1 by Hamas’s outgoing chief Khaled Meshaal did not contradict its founding covenant, published in 1988.
Trailed for weeks by Hamas officials, the document appeared to be an attempt to soften the group’s language towards Israel. But it still called for “the liberation of all of historical Palestine”, said armed resistance was a means to achieve that goal, and did not recognise Israel’s right to exist.
“The pledge Hamas made before God was to liberate all of Palestine,” Zahar said on Wednesday. “The charter is the core of (Hamas’s) position and the mechanism of this position is the document.
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