Top Hamas official rejects PA’s new draft constitution as ‘tailored to the occupier’

Top Hamas official Basem Naim rejects the draft constitution that the Palestinian Authority published on Monday as it seeks to carry out reforms that would let it take the reins of Gaza under US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan.

Naim does not cite specific clauses in the constitution as grounds for his rejection, and instead says the document was written under unacceptable circumstances.

“This constitution must be rejected both in form and in content, because people under occupation don’t write constitutions tailored to the occupier,” Naim says in a statement carried by Palestinian media. “We won’t write rules to regulate life in prison.”

The constitution, Naim charges, “was written in closed rooms under French supervision, based on the disastrous and unpatriotic New York Declaration in July.”

The declaration, which was issued by a French- and Saudi-hosted international conference with the blessing of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, called for Hamas to disarm, condemned its October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, urged reforms in the PA, and endorsed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The United Nations General Assembly in September passed a resolution endorsing the New York Declaration, but Abbas could not attend because the US had denied him a visa.

Abbas’s Fatah, the dominant faction in the PA, says in response that the draft constitution was written with “a purely Palestinian mind, hand and will,” and that Hamas “must apologize to our Palestinian people” for bringing about a state of “division and disaster.”

Fatah calls on Hamas to “help overcome the catastrophic repercussions of October 7” and to get in line with the international community by “recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people.