Hamas and History | RealClearReligion
Hamas, self-described as the Palestinian Resistance Movement and The Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, officially came into being with its adoption and publication of its Charter or Covenant in 1988. The Charter (Articles 7-15) lays out in unambiguous terms a program of hatred against Jews and its purpose of utterly eliminating the “Zionist entity,” its term for the state of Israel. The phrase “from the River to the Sea” appears in the Charter as defining the scope of Palestine as reaching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. For the Hamas Charter, this territory is an Islamic waqf or divine donation to Muslims that cannot be renounced, and no non-Muslims have the right to rule it. Thus the “Zionist entity” and all who support it must be destroyed. How to do this, for the Charter, is through jihad of the sword, an individual duty for every Muslim. The end of obliterating the “Zionist entity” and all who support it requires the killing of all Jews, and when this is accomplished the end of history, the final Day of Judgment, will arrive, when the entire earth shall be Muslim for eternity.
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