Is Hamas re-branding to orient towards Egypt?

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Nearly 30 years after Hamas was founded in the occupied Palestinian territories, it is now revisiting its founding ideals and principles. The move comes at a watershed moment as the senior leadership also undergoes a significant reshuffle, a process that has been long in debate and fruition.

The changes—aimed at appeasing domestic constituencies and establishing some distance between Hamas and the parent movement of the Muslim Brotherhood—are likely to get a mixed reception in the Middle East and Western capitals. While the Hamas leadership hopes their changes may lead to improved relations with regional power brokers such as Egypt, it is unlikely to lead to the kind of moderating shift that Western diplomats have long demanded of the movement.
In the last year, Hamas has worked assiduously to rebuild relations with Egypt. It considers President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi’s country a key determinant to its future in the Gaza Strip, with nearly two million inhabitants.
Moderating Charter
Hamas, founded in 1987, authored its charter document during the height of the first Palestinian Intifada. These “new kids on the block” emerged with a commanding rhetoric of jihad and enmity against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands from, in its words, “the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan.” Hamas’ descriptions of Israel drew on anti-Semitic tropes crudely taken from from the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
The charter declared Hamas an Islamic resistance movement to rival the then-dominant Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Hamas’ leaders reviled the PLO for being open to negotiating with Israel.
As Hamas leaders now set about revising the charter, they’ve set aside the exhortation to jihad against Israel. And the new charter emphasizes leaders’ long-held willingness to move from maximalist positions. The revised charter, for example, offers the possibility of Hamas accepting political solutions to achieving Palestinian statehood in the territory of ...

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