Source: New Hamas Platform Text May Distance Gaza Terror Group from Muslim Brotherhood

TEL AVIV — Hamas is drafting a new political and ideological charter in the wake of top militant Yehiyeh Sinwar’s recent election as party leader, a member of Egypt’s liaison team to Hamas told Breitbart Jerusalem.

The source was providing context to a statement last month from Hamas official Osama Hamdan, who told Al Jazeera that Hamas would soon a document clearly outlining its positions on various issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Egyptian source said that Hamas told Cairo that its new platform will stress the movement’s character as Palestinian nationalists, unaffiliated with any international movements, chief among them the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ ideological counterpart.

The Muslim Brotherhood opposes the regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Sisi’s, who has been bent on suppressing Islamic opposition since he ousted Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi from power, in 2014.

The new Hamas platform will replace the current one, drafted in 1988 by Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel in 2004, the source said.

The Egyptian official claimed there are talks that the new platform could include a conditional willingness to accept a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders.

Contacted by Breitbart Jerusalem, a senior Hamas official confirmed that the movement is working on a new platform. He said that it’s too soon to know for certain what understandings the negotiations between the different Hamas chapters in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Israeli jails and third countries, slated to last until the end of March or the beginning of April, would yield, including on the nature of the relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, the Hamas official denied that the movement would accept the 1967 borders as a basis for the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He said the new platform seeks to highlight Hamas’ character as a Palestinian national movement, and a party to the Arab and international effort to put an end to what the Hamas source claimed was “Israeli occupation.” Hamas believes the entire state of Israel is occupied.