In an interview with the Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Information Center (PIC) Dec. 22, Sami Khater, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau, identified his movement’s five strategic priorities for 2020. Hamas leaders rarely talk about specific priorities for their next strategy. This has been limited to Hamas’ official political documents.

Priorities include developing Hamas’ armed structure against Israel to tilt the balance of power in its favor; adopting a national position on managing the conflict with Israel; confronting the Israeli measures against the Palestinians in every way; standing up to the US-proposed deal of the century; and mobilizing the Palestinian diaspora to support the Palestinian people back home.

The talk about Hamas’ priorities came Dec. 14, only days after the 32nd anniversary of the founding of the movement. Khater, 70, is based in Qatar and is one of the first-generation members of Hamas and a member of its political bureau since its founding. He supervised the establishment of political action departments.

He told Al-Monitor, “Hamas is permanently working on achieving its strategies, which are approved by its organizational institutions. As long as they are strategies, they are not linked to a specific time limit. But the most important obstacles to achieving them are Israeli measures at various levels and some international policies, such as the US administration and other countries in the region whose regimes bet on Israeli and US support to ensure the stability of their rule.”