What is Hamas?

The Charter of Allah: The Platform of the Islamic
Resistance Movement (Hamas)

“In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate You are the best community that has been raised up for mankind. Ye enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency; and ye believe in Allah. And if the People of the Scripture had believed, it had been better for them. Some of them are believers; but most of them are evil-doers. They will not harm you save a trifling hurt, and if they fight against you they will turn and flee. And afterward they will not be helped. Ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found save [where they grasp] a rope from Allah and a rope from man. They have incurred anger from their Lord, and wretchedness is laid upon them. That is because they used to disbelieve the revelations of Allah, and slew the Prophets wrongfully. That is because they were rebellious and used to transgress.” Surat Al-Imran (III), verses 109-111 Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors. The Islamic World is burning. It is incumbent upon each one of us to pour some water, little as it may be, with a view of extinguishing as much of the fire as he can, without awaiting action by the others.

"The People of Scripture" are the Jews. Note, "most of them are evil-doers" These Jews have "incurred anger from their Lord", ie Allah. The commentary on this sura assures the reader that "Israel will rise and will remain erect intil Islam eliminates it."

I think that the preamble to the Hamas Charter (1988) is pretty clear.

Now read this:

Article Thirteen: Peaceful Solutions, [Peace] Initiatives and International Conferences

[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic
Resistance Movement.

...

There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.

The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.

The Palestinian people are too noble to have their future, their right and their destiny submitted to a vain game. As the hadith has it: “The people of Syria are Allah’s whip on this land; He takes revenge by their intermediary from whoever he wished among his worshipers. The Hypocrites among them are forbidden from vanquishing the true believers, and they will die in anxiety and sorrow.” (Told by Tabarani, who is traceable in ascending order of traditionaries to Muhammad, and by Ahmed whose chain of transmission is incomplete. But it is bound to be a true hadith, for both story tellers are reliable. Allah knows best.)

OK, so Hamas will not engage in peace talks, because they are a waste of time. There is no solution except Jihad, and by this, be assured that Hamas do not mean "interior spiritual struggle". Further note that this is evidenced by quotations from the Hadith. There are numerous other references to both the Hadith (the sayings of the so-called Prophet Muhummed, and the Koran) throughout the Hamas Charter, it is by no means a secular document.

And don't think that it's just the Jews or the Zionists or Israel that is the problem. The problem, my reader, is YOU (assuming you're not a Muslim... actually assuming you're not the right type of Muslim).

Article Five: Dimensions of Time and Space of the Hamas
As the Movement adopts Islam as its way of life, its time dimension extends
back as far as the birth of the Islamic Message and of the Righteous Ancestor.
Its ultimate goal is Islam, the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution.
Its special dimension extends wherever on earth there are Muslims, who adopt
Islam as their way of life; thus, it penetrates to the deepest reaches of the land and to the highest spheres of Heavens.

Article Ten
The Islamic Resistance Movement, while breaking its own path, will do its utmost to constitute at the same time a support to the weak, a defense to all the oppressed. It will spare no effort to implement the truth and abolish evil, in speech and in fact, both here and in any other location where it can reach out and exert influence.

The for Hamas, struggle they are engaged in is open ended and not limited to Israel. They want to bring Islam to the whole world, and make everyone live under its precepts.

This is the essential background to the latest violence in Gaza.

The people of "Palestine" elected Hamas in free and fair elections in 2006 - no-one disputes that these elections represented the will of the Palestinian people. This was after the Unilateral withdrawal of all military facilities and settlements from Gaza by the Israeli government in 2005.

After the elections, Hamas began importing large amounts of munitions into Gaza, leading Israel to close the border. It is also important to note that Gaza also shares a border with Egypt, but the crossing at Rafah is under Israeli control. This blockade of Gaza has been in place since June 2007.

In 2007, Hamas fired some 5,500 rockets into Israel. In June 2008, a truce was declared between Hamas and Israel, and on 23 December, Hamas unilaterally announced that the truce was over. On numerous previous occasions, Islamist organisations have decaled truces, only to renounce them later. They do this when they are in a position of weakness and it allows them to rearm. Like so much else of what they do, this has theological underpinnings. "The Prophet Muhammad made a temporary hudna, or truce, with the Jews about 1,400 years ago, so Hamas allows the idea. But no one in Hamas says he would make a peace treaty with Israel or permanently give up any part of British Mandate Palestine. Steven Erlanger writes in the New York Times,

The Prophet Muhammad made a temporary hudna, or truce, with the Jews about
1,400 years ago, so Hamas allows the idea. But no one in Hamas says he would
make a peace treaty with Israel or permanently give up any part of British
Mandate Palestine.

“They talk of hudna, not of peace or reconciliation with Israel,” said Mr. Abusada, the political scientist. “They believe over time they will be strong enough to liberate all historic Palestine.”

A "hudna" is a temporary peace which the Muslims enter into in order to grow
strong and renew the war. See here for more on the theology behind this and the history of the treaty of Hudaybiyya (although also note that Muslim commentators do not agree that Muhummed violated the treaty). But, on the other hand, this is what Yaser Arafat said when he didn't think kafirs were listening about hudna,

I see this agreement as being no more than the agreement signed between our
Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh in Mecca.

This makes it very difficult to believe Hamas when it asks for a truce.

I'll come back to this theme again soon.