, still available in February 2024]
The updated text does not make any reference to the Jews who might "hide themselves behind a stone or a tree", but seems to adopt a much more moderate language, as happens, for instance, in Chapter 14:
The Zionist project is a racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others; it is hostile to the Palestinian people and to their aspiration for freedom, liberation, return and self-determination. The Israeli entity is the plaything of the Zionist project and its base of aggression.
Then, if we continue to read, we find an exceptionally stunning Chapter 20:
Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. 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.
Again, the wording looks great, but someone might be a bit puzzled.
Apart from the "return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes" (where the term "refugees" should be probably interpreted as a synonym of "descendants of the refugees"), there are at least two damned questions that seem to be of considerable practical importance:
1. How is it ever possible to combine "the lines of the 4th of June 1967" with the firm determination to reject "any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea"?!?!?
2. If "the lines of the 4th of June 1967" are acceptable, why the hell had the Palestinians and their brothers/friends been making every possible effort to prepare a new war against the State of Israel for eighteen years, from 1949 to 1967 instead of creating a Palestinian state?!?!?
Probably, many political pundits and gurus are inclined to answer the second question by observing that the problem of the "refugees" had not been solved. That is true, but it is also true that wars always have consequences—quite often, tragic consequences, as happened in the case of the refugees who were expelled from Silesia, East Prussia, Dalmatia, Istria at the end of World War II. Therefore, it is not so surprising that the State of Israel did not welcome with open arms many people who had left their lands in the hope of coming back after the predicted, long-awaited slaughter of the Jews during the war that had been launched against Israel in 1948...
Last updated on December 2, 2024