IT WAS a dramatic final act for Khaled Meshal, soon to be the ex-leader of Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip and hopes to run all of biblical Palestine. After months of speculation he unveiled a new policy document meant to amend (though not replace) the militant group’s founding charter of 1988. Most strikingly, it endorses the creation of a Palestinian state in just the West Bank and Gaza. As such, it moves a bit closer to the “two-state solution” that has been the aim of American-led peace talks for more than two decades. Hamas has never accepted it. But now, it says, Palestinian statehood is a “formula of national consensus”, although it still thinks that peace with Israel is anathema.
Its document is also notable for what it does not say. The anti-Semitic language of the charter of 1988 is not repeated. Nor is the declaration that Hamas is a “wing of the Muslim Brotherhood”. The new document makes no mention of the pan-Islamist group, and Mr Meshal made this separation explicit at a press conference on May 1st in Qatar. “We are a part of the intellectual school of the Brotherhood,” he said. “But we are an independent Palestinian...Continue reading
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