section_path: Policies towards Israel and Palestine
section_name: Policies towards Israel and Palestine
paragraph_text: Policies towards Israel and Palestine
  
  Hamas' policy towards Israel has evolved. Historically, Hamas envisioned a Palestinian state on all of the territory that belonged to the British Mandate for Palestine (that is, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea), and in its 1988 Charter framed the Mandate Palestine as ‘Islamic waqf ’ or endowment, under sovereignty of God.: 837, 839 With Hamas's 1993 Introductory Memorandum, Hamas broke away from the uncompromising character of their religious frame, and proposed two stages of liberation of Palestine: a short-term objective to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, and a long-term objective still striving to liberate Mandate Palestine in its entirety.: 837, 839 This distinction between "short-term policy" and "long-term solution" is present in many subsequent documents. The aim of this double policy is to create an authority on a portion of the former Mandatory Palestine, which would eventually lead to the restoration of Islamic sovereignty across all of (Mandatory) Palestine.
  
  In 2006, Hamas signed the Palestinian Prisoners' Document which supports the quest for a Palestinian state "on all territories occupied in 1967". This document also recognized authority of the President of the Palestinian National Authority to negotiate with Israel. Hamas also signed the Cairo Declaration in 2005, which emphasized the goal of ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. On 2 May 2017, Khaled Mashal, chief of the Hamas Political Bureau, presented a new Charter, in which Hamas accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state "on the basis of June 4, 1967 " (West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem). But the new Charter did not recognize Israel nor relinquish Palestinian claims to all of historical Palestine. Many scholars saw Hamas' acceptance of the 1967 borders as a tacit acceptance of another entity on the other side.