Experts on all sides of the complex struggle here say the new document is unlikely to represent any profound change in Hamas’s true position toward Israel. The group recently chose a hard-liner, Yehya Sinwar, as its new leader in Gaza, and it has still in no way recognized Israel or renounced violence.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel quickly denounced the move. “Hamas’s document is a smoke screen,” he said in a statement. “We see Hamas continuing to invest all of its resources not just in preparing for war with Israel, but also in educating the children of Gaza to want to destroy Israel.”

Hamas is still considered a terrorist group by much of the West, including the United States, a status that has led to its exclusion from wider international talks about the Palestinians’ future.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the group had to move beyond its original charter to achieve its goals. “The document gives us a chance to connect with the outside world,” he said. “To the world, our message is: Hamas is not radical. We are a pragmatic and civilized movement. We do not hate the Jews. We only fight who occupies our lands and kills our people.”

The document is a distillation of various public statements over the years signaling an attempt by Hamas to appear more pragmatic since it seized broad control of Gaza in 2007, after winning parliamentary elections a year earlier. Four years in the drafting, the document represents the consensus of Hamas’s top leadership.

The paper calls for Hamas to distance itself from the Muslim Brotherhood in an effort to build stronger ties with Egypt, which controls the Gaza Strip’s southern border. It reiterates the Hamas leadership’s view that it is open to a Palestinian state along the borders established after the 1967 war, though it does not renounce future claims to Palestinian rule over what is now Israel. And the group specifically weakened language from its 1988 charter proclaiming Jews as enemies and comparing their views to Nazism, though the new document does not replace the original charter.

“Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish, but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine,” the new document states.