Actually, the 2017 charter is an amendment to the original from 1988, and is a thoughtful document.

I should clarify what I said in my earlier post: Under the new charter, Hamas recognises the 1967 UN partition plan and advocates for a Palestinian State within those 1967 borders.

On the issue of Israel, the charter does not explicitly recognise the Israeli state that was declared in 1948. Hamas still refers to the current Israeli state as a "Zionist entity", but agrees on the 1967 n"national consensus":

Section 20 of the charter says this:

"However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus."

When the 2017 document was published, Hamas leaders talked with reporters from France:

"Another Hamas leader, Ahmed Yusef, told AFP [Agence France Press] the updated charter was "more moderate, more measured and would help protect us against accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and breaches of international law".

It will "differentiate between Jews as a religious community on the one hand, and the occupation and Zionist entity on the other," he said.

Indeed, Sections 16 and 17 of the Charter address this issue specifically:

16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

17. Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.