Gaza (Reuters): The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas will drop its longstanding call for Israel's destruction as well as its association with the Muslim Brotherhood, in a policy document to be issued on Monday, Gulf Arab sources said.
Hamas's move appears aimed at improving relations with Gulf Arab states and Egypt, which label the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, and mending a rift with the main Palestinian faction headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.
It comes two days before Abbas is due in Washington, and days after President Donald Trump announced that he may travel to Israel this month and sees no reason why there should not be peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
But the document, to be announced later on Monday, will still reject Israel's right to exist and back "armed struggle" against it, the Gulf Arab sources said.
Israel rejected the reported shift, calling it an attempt by Hamas to delude the world that it was becoming more moderate.
"Hamas is attempting to fool the world but it will not succeed," said David Keyes, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "They dig terror tunnels and have launched thousands upon thousands of missiles at Israeli civilians," he said. "This is the real Hamas."
Founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Egyptian Islamist movement, Hamas has fought three wars with Israel since 2007 and has carried out hundreds of armed attacks in Israel and in Israeli-occupied territories.
Many Western countries classify it as a terrorist group over its failure to renounce violence, recognize Israel's right to exist and accept existing interim Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements.
The Gulf Arab sources said Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, will say in the document that it agrees to a transitional Palestinian state along the borders from 1967, when Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in a war with Arab states. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
A state along 1967 borders is the goal of Hamas' main political rival, the Fatah movement led by Abbas. His Palestinian Authority has engaged in peace talks with Israel on that basis, although the last, U.S.-mediated round collapsed three years ago.
It remained unclear whether the document replaces or changes in any way Hamas's 1988 charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction and is the Islamist group's covenant.
