Chronicle of the Middle East and North Africa
Hamas, also spelled Ḥamās, acronym of Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, English Islamic Resistance Movement, is a militant Palestinian nationalist and Islamist movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip dedicated to the establishment of an independent Islamic state in historical Palestine. It was founded in 1987 as a response to the secular approach of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its rejection of any compromise on Palestinian territory.
