The founding document for Hamas is the Hamas Covenant, which denies the existence of Israel and calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. In addition, it demands the killing of Jews. (The founding document of Fatah, the PLO, and Hezbollah also declare that their mission is the violent destruction of Israel.)

The covenant declares that no Arab country, Palestinian leader, or any organization can negotiate with Israel. It further asserts that any peace initiative contradicts the principles of the covenant, and the only solution is jihad.

The following are statements from the Hamas Covenant:
◦“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
◦“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very series. It needs all sincere efforts.”
◦“The Islamist Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”
◦“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews [killing the Jews], when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Musims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”
◦“Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”
◦“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king of president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Muslim generations until Judgement Day.”
◦“This is the law government the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force.”
◦“Initiatives and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.”
◦“When did the infidels do justice to the believers?”
◦“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
◦“It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Muslim generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem and should be dealt with on this basis.”
◦“Their lackeys who are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs. These organizations have ample resources that enable them to play their role in societies for the purpose of achieving the Zionist targets and to deepen the concepts that would serve the enemy.”
◦“Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies.”
◦“We are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser.”
◦“Peace and quite would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are the best witness to that. It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region because the day these followers should take over, there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror.”
◦“The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”