Israel, EU Nations Promise World's Longest Undersea Gas Pipeline, Revised Hamas Charter Does Not Recognize Israel's Right To Exist

Israel, EU nations promise world's longest undersea gas pipeline

Israel, Italy, Greece and Cyprus eye longest undersea gas pipeline

Israel, Italy, Greece and Cyprus pledge to move ahead with the world’s longest undersea gas pipeline from the eastern Mediterranean to southern Europe, with support from the European Union.

If carried out as planned, the long-discussed $6.2 billion pipeline will take gas from Israel and Cyprus’s recently discovered offshore gas reserves to Europe and could help reduce the Continent’s dependence on Russian energy at a time of ongoing tensions.

In a joint news conference in Tel Aviv, energy ministers from the four nations, as well as the EU’s Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete, pledge their commitment to the project.

Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz (2nd R), Cypriot Minister of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism, Yiorgos Lakkotrypis (L) and Greek Economy minister Giorgos Stathakis after signing a pledge to build the world’s longest undersea gas pipeline, April 3, 2017. (AFP Photo/Jack Guez)Italy, Israel, Greece and Cyprus pledged to move ahead on the world’s longest undersea gas pipeline to take it from the eastern Mediterranean to southern Europe, with support from the European Union. / AFP PHOTO / JACK GUEZ

Revised Hamas Charter Does Not Recognize Israel’s Right to Exist, Not Even a Little

The Hamas new charter, a draft of which reached Israeli media Sunday, offers contradictory views regarding the terrorist group’s embracing a 1967-border Palestinian State while concurrently calling for a war on Israel.

The new charter, revising and replacing the Hamas original 1988 document, was leaked to the Lebanese news site Al-Mayadeen Sunday.

The Ma’an news agency points out that while Point 19 of the charter accepts “the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state along June 4, 1967 lines, with the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes,” the document also rejects “any alternative to the liberation of Palestine completely from its sea to its river,” meaning from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

Indeed, the same document that seeks a recognized state ostensibly alongside 1948 Israel, also vows that Hamas “will not relinquish any part of the land of Palestine, no matter what the reasons, circumstances, and pressures could be, and no matter how long occupation may continue.”

Hamas official Ahmad Yousif told Al-Mayadeen that “Hamas accepted an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders as a matter of preserving Palestinian consensus,” but maintains its right to armed resistance.

Yousif confirmed to Ma’an on Sunday evening that the new charter continues to “legitimize all types of resistance and struggle against occupation.”

Indeed, whomever bothered to actually read the new charter, would have discovered this statement:

“The fact that the Palestinian people were expelled from their land and displaced through the creation of the Zionist entity does not annul the Palestinian people’s right to all of their land, nor does that establish a legitimate right for the usurper Zionist entity to have this land.”