section_path: Policies towards Israel and Palestine/Recognition of Israel
section_name: Recognition of Israel
paragraph_text: Recognition of Israel
  
  Hamas leaders have repeatedly emphasized they do not recognize Israel. But Hamas has also repeatedly accepted the 1967 borders in signed agreements (in 2005, 2006, and 2007) and in its 2017 charter. Some scholars saw Hamas' acceptance of the 1967 borders as a tacit acceptance of another entity on the other side, while others state that Hamas retains the long-term objective of establishing one state in former Mandatory Palestine.: 837, 839 Whether Hamas would recognize Israel in a future peace agreement is debated. Others argue that the long-term objective and lack of official recognition of Israel is merely maintained as a bargaining chip for future negotiations. Several scholars have compared Hamas's lack of recognition of Israel to Likud's lack of recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
  
  In 1995 Hamas repeated its rejection of any recognition of Israel. However, after Hamas won the 2006 elections, it did not implement then 1988 Charter as policy, and instead agreed to work with the existing Palestinian political system.: 839 In the 2007 Mecca agreement, Hamas agreed to respect previous agreements between Fatah and Israel, including the Oslo Accords in which the PLO recognized Israel. Both in the 2007 agreement and in the 2006 Palestinian Prisoners' Document, Hamas agreed to a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. Scholars see this as "implicit" recognition of Israel because by accepting a Palestinian state limited to the 1967 borders, Hamas acknowledged the existence of an entity on the other side.
  
  Mousa Abu Marzook, then the vice-president of Hamas' Political Bureau, explained his party's position in 2011: while Hamas did not recognize Israel as a state, it considered the existence of Israel as "amr waqi" (or fait accompli, meaning something that has happened and cannot be changed). He called this "de facto recognition" of Israel. Likewise, Graham Usher writes that while Hamas does not consider Israel to be legitimate, it has accepted Israel as political reality.
  
  In 2017, Hamas once again accepted the 1967 borders in its new charter, that "drop the call for the destruction of Israel from its manifesto". While it did not abrogate the old charter, Hamas leaders explained that "The original charter has now become a historical document and part of an earlier stage in our evolution. It will remain in the movement's bookshelf as a record of our past." Khaled Mashal stated that the new document reflected "our position for now."
  
  Tareq Baconi notes that Hamas has said it would accept mutual recognition of Israel in any consensus peace deal approved by other Palestinian parties and the population in a referendum. To explain why it withholds formal recognition, Baconi argues that Hamas has learned from the fact that, in the 1993 Oslo Accords, the PLO made a "historic concession" in recognizing Israel on 78% of the land of historic Palestine (along the 1967 borders), but was unable to convince Israel to recognize Palestine on the remaining 22% of the land. Having already recognized Israel, the PLO was unable to use recognition to extract any further concessions from Israel, thus according to Baconi the lesson for Hamas was that you can't negotiate from a position of weakness, and the issue of formal recognition of Israel is kept as bargaining chip for negotiations.
  
  Some scholars, including Baconi, Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, have argued that Hamas has offered more to the Israelis than Israeli major parties including Likud have offered in return to the Palestinians, both with its de facto recognition of the 1967 borders and its pledge to accept the recognition of Israel in any future peace deal that has the consensus and approval of the Palestinian parties and population. Rashid Khalidi said in November 2023: "It is well-established that Israeli major governing parties like Likud have refused to recognize Palestinian statehood under any conditions, the constant references to "Judea and Samaria", and this has only increased in recent times with the Knesset passing a resolution opposing Palestinian statehood."