Talk:Hamas

Reinstating subsection ‘Policies and attitudes towards Israel’

The topic of this now restored subsection (recently the part of section ‘Political and religious positions’ until the start of subsection ‘Hudna proposals’) has since its inception on 11 Apr 2023 always been: policies and attitudes [of Hamas] towards Israel – though it never yet fully bore that name. The last title it had (‘Two-state solution’) was not fully right (the subsection covered more options than that) but was removed on 10 Dec and not replaced by a new name; possibly to have an excuse to move this subsection back to the top position within section “Political and religious positions” where it had been expelled earlier by another colleague. I don’t have a strong preference as to the following order of subsections here, but I do care for sections and subsections to have clear titles, usefully indicating/demarcating their content.
Next to reinstating a title above the subsection, I’ve organized the already given information chronologically. (The chronologic structure of the subsection had gravely withered away, the subsection had thereby gotten very intransparent and incoherent, except perhaps for a few Wikipedia contributors who regularly edited on it.) While doing so, I noticed some (smaller or larger) mistakes et cetera which I’ve ‘corrected’ in the way and for the reasons I explain here below. Ofcourse, each of these ‘corrections’ stands open for debate and further improvement.
I’ve also integrated the subsection about hudna (slightly summarized) back into (the chronology of) this subsection ‘policies/attitudes towards Israel’: hudna proposals are part of Hamas’s policies/attitudes towards Israel; the Wikipedia visitor may want to speculate about how hudna proposals hang together with other Hamas ‘attitudes’ towards Israel; so I see no strong ground, logic or necessity to keep that information in a separate subsection, outside of the chronology of the rest of the information on this topic.

• In today’s edit, several sentences have been slightly rephrased for clarity or to be more faithful to the text of the given reference source.

• The previously first sentence (Hamas “dominant…force”) needed to be dated (“since 2007”).

• Previous sentence 5 (‘…President of the PNA…’) made a too vague statement (on behalf of author Seurat), I’ve replaced it with more concrete and clear information about the status of PLO and Palestinian President, from the ‘Palestinians’ Prisoners Document’ (2006) itself.

• In sentence 6 (‘Mashal, 2 May 2017’), the explanation of the phrase: “… on the basis of June 4, 1967…” had lost a few essential words, after several edits; I’ve put them back. The date of the press conference is now also corrected, into 1 May 2017.

• As to sentence 7: This statement was not made by Ayoob in his book. Professor Ayoob in his 2020 book wrote (as this Wikipedia article more or less cited until 10Dec2023): “Acceptance of the 1967 borders can be interpreted as a de facto acceptance of the preconditions for a two-state solution”, while only suggesting (not stating!) that such acceptance took place in the 2017 charter. That statement (in its correct citation) seems too vague and hypothetical for this section: this section is about Hamas positions, but Ayoob doesn’t give clear, correct (new) information about any Hamas position. (The 2017 Hamas charter doesn’t speak of any ‘accepting borders’; nobody – not even Ayoob – even contends that the 2017 charter ‘accepts borders’.) If you disagree, please put a (more correct) citation of Prof. Ayoob back into the (sub)section (and please explain the relevance of it).

• Previously third paragraph (‘Whether Hamas…’):
  The third and fourth sentences of this paragraph were drawing conclusions from the ‘fact’ of “Hamas's acceptance of the 1967 borders”, which ‘fact’ however is not prooved or stated anywhere in Wikipedia as to be a fact. In that case, I believe we in Wikipedia cannot draw conclusions from it (as was already noted in a {clarify} tag), so I deleted these sentences. If you disagree, please put the sentences back and tell us, why you disagree, and what the sentences mean (see the {clarify} tag in the now removed version, asking for clarification).

• Previously fourth paragraph (‘In a 2006…’): The second and third sentences of this paragraph were wrongly summarizing the referenced source, so I repaired those statements now.

• The previously tenth paragraph (‘2011, Mishal and Abbas respecting borders’) seemed too vague, so I removed it. “Respecting borders” in this context seems a meaningless statement (as noted in a tag since roughly two weeks: which border exactly is meant, and what exactly does Mishal or Hamas do or not do when they ‘respect’ a border?). If anyone can give clear, substantial information about that Mishal–Abbas–event in 2011, please add it to the article.

• Previously eleventh paragraph (‘February 2012…’) was extensively describing a few weeks of no-direct-violence between Israel and Hamas (in 2012), which I’ve condensed to the essential facts for this (sub)section. --Corriebertus (talk) 13:48, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

“Hamas is widely popular in Palestinian society”, our article stated, up until today.

I would very much doubt whether “Hamas is widely popular in Palestinian society…”, as the lead section until today contended. Inhabitants of the Gaza Strip live under totalitarian Hamas regime (“…In the first years of the Intifada, Hamas violence was restricted to Palestinians; collaborators with Israel, and people it defined as "moral deviants"…”, and: even in 1993, long before Hamas dictatorship in Gaza as of June 2007, only 17% of Gazans supported Hamas – both stated in our section Hamas#First Intifada; in 1996, only 3% trusted the Hamas leader (section ‘Oslo years’); torturing of Fatah followers in 2007 (section Hamas#Hamas–Fatah conflict); see also section Hamas#Extrajudicial killings of rivals) where, as in all dictatorships, it would be dangerous for your health to utter anything else than abundant praise for your government.
Now, our article (in lead section) corroborated that claim (“widely popular…”) with four sources. Two of them were press articles from after the start of the 2023–2024 war, which only state that ‘support for Hamas rises’, which is really not the same as saying that it is high (and which rising also is quite logical during a war). Two others were books: Slater 2020, Phillips 2011, which ofcourse I and most of us cannot check. Considering though that it seems rather impossible to proove that civilians truly are fond of the dictatorship they live under, I’d like to see clear citations from those books, for this highly unprobable conclusion. --Corriebertus (talk) 17:28, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

I questioned that too. I think maybe Palestinian views on Hamas change over time due to circumstances. Here is a report from Oct 25 2023 by Arab Barometer:

https://www.arabbarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/what-palestinians-really-think-of-hamas-2023-10-26-08-4941.pdf Wafflefrites (talk) 04:34, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 18 March 2024

Marwan Issa, who was recently confirmed to have been killed by Israel, should also get an X marking his death/assassination, like Saleh Al-Arouri Nextrava (talk) 18:41, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. jlwoodwa (talk) 19:46, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

"two spokesmen, four stances"

There appears to be now original research in this article where editors are introducing themes in Hamas' positions that are not found in scholarly sources. For example, can someone tell me which scholars say Hamas had "two spokesmen, four stances"? If not, why is this in the article? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 01:34, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I see it was introduced by Corriebertus. In fact, most of that edit appears to be WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. Much of it is also unsourced.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 01:36, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Venezuela allied??

Where is the source for this? The only sources listed just show how Venezuela has condemned the actions of Israel, not that they have supported the actions of the Hamas 73.160.109.176 (talk) 05:13, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

[Edit request] Add Argentina to the list of countries that declared Hamas as a terrorist organization

President Milei has declared Hamas as a terrorist organization multiple times while also supporting Israel.

Here's a link to an article from Clarín, an argentinian news source: https://www.clarin.com/politica/gesto-milei-israel-listo-decreto-declarar-hamas-organizacion-terrorista_0_LavGJmp2y9.html SnowTag (talk) 04:29, 19 April 2024 (UTC)