Despite New Charter, Hamas Founder Clarifies Goal is Still to Destroy Israel

The Times of Israel reports: Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar clarified Wednesday that his terror group’s new political program, which some interpreted as accepting the idea of a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, would not preclude Hamas from seeking to liberate all of historic Palestine, including Israel.

“If we liberate Palestine though the resistance until the 1967 borders, we will go directly to liberate the rest of Palestine and the territories of 1948, and there will be no negotiations,” Zahar said at a conference in Gaza addressing international reactions to the new policy document, according to the Hamas-linked al-Resalah news site.

Zahar was likely responding to hardline critics of Hamas’s new program, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group. “As partners with our Hamas brothers in the struggle for liberation, we feel concern over the document,” Islamic Jihad’s deputy leader, Ziad al-Nakhala, said Saturday.

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