Hamas

Abstract

It was announced on 16 November 1992 that ‘Hamas’, an Arabic acronym for the Palestinian Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, had formally entered into an alliance with Iran, the latter promising to provide financial and political backing to Hamas in its ‘war to liberate Palestine’. The covenant stated that ‘Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam obliterates it, just as it has obliterated others before it’. This statement merely formalised an established fact, as the Tehran government had already been heavily supporting Hamas.