Global, Israel, Politics

A Kindler, Gentler Hamas?

According to EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana, much of the world has been getting Hamas all wrong.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Solana said that Hamas does not want to destroy Israel, on the contrary:

Hamas wants to “liberate the Palestinians,” not to destroy Israel, Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
In an interview following his talks in Tel Aviv with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Solana insisted that it was “not impossible” for Hamas to change and “recognize the existence of Israel.” History had shown that people and nations “adapt to reality,” he said. “I don’t want to lose hope.”

Not that Mr. Solana is completely inventing this statement out of thin air: Hamas member Mohammed Ghazal did say to YNet in September 2005 that Hamas “could one day amend a charter calling for the destruction of Israel.”
While some are calling this a “revelation of the great extent of [Solana’s] ignorance”, at a minimum, this does show that, at best, Mr. Solana did not read the Hamas charter in full, or at worst, he is a full-on apologist for Hamas, as Daniel Freedman of the New York Sun asserted.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing, then, that he may be resigning.

2 thoughts on “A Kindler, Gentler Hamas?

  1. similar statements have come out of others in Hamas. the leader in Nabuls said that the charter was “not the koran.”
    i wonder how many hamas members have even read the charter in full.

  2. It seems to me that it is true that the charter is “not the koran.” And through that thinking, how important is the charter anyway? Do you think Israelis (and hopefully the international community) are only waiting for Hamas to change their charter to then embrace them? Don’t you think it’s infinitely more important that Hamas simply renounce terrorism and try to through their actions, take a course of compromise?

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