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Dec 20, 2021 · GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The international community has sent billions of dollars in aid to the Gaza Strip in recent years to provide relief to the more than 2 million Palestinians living in the isolated, Hamas-ruled territory.
May 24, 2021 · In 2020, the US gave $3.8bn (£2.7bn) in aid to Israel - part of a long-term, yearly commitment made under the Obama administration. Almost all of this aid was for military assistance.
- Jake Horton
- Overview
- The Iranian connection
- Cash in suitcases
- Cracking down
The unemployment rate in Gaza is 47% and more than 80% of its population lives in poverty, according to the United Nations. Hamas, however, has funded an armed force of thousands equipped with rockets and drones and built a vast web of tunnels under Gaza. Estimates of its annual military budget range from $100 million to $350 million, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources.
As the U.S. House and Senate will be asking in separate hearings Wednesday and Thursday, where does all that cash come from?
Since coming to power in the Gaza Strip 17 years ago, Hamas has filled its coffers with hundreds of millions in international aid, overt and covert injections of cash from Iran and other ideological partners, as well as cryptocurrency, taxes, extortion and smuggling, according to current and former U.S. officials and regional experts.
Much of the money is public and legal, including large sums of financial aid from Qatar via the United Nations, an arrangement encouraged and approved by Israel. The Qatari aid covers the salaries of civil servants, buys fuel for the power grid and provides cash to needy families.
Some of it is less than legal, according to experts. In addition to levying taxes on Gaza’s businesses and residents, Hamas imposes unofficial fees on smuggled goods and other activity, for a combined income of up to $450 million per year. Hamas also has real estate and other investments around the globe, despite international restrictions, and uses cryptocurrency to mask some of its transactions.
Some of it may be fully illegal. A small portion of its budget seems to come from smuggling in South America, including drug smuggling.
The size of the Hamas budget and its sources have both morphed over time.
Iran has been a consistent financial and military patron of Hamas since the 1990s, long before the group achieved control of Gaza. The funding has gradually increased, and is now at about $100 million annually, according to the State Department.
Hamas leaders have publicly acknowledged Iran’s ongoing financial and military support.
In an interview this month that appeared on Russia Today TV, senior Hamas official Ali Baraka said that “First and foremost, it is Iran that is giving us money and weapons.” Last year, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told Al Jazeera that Iran paid $70 million to the group to support its defense plan.
In addition to Iran’s support, Hamas has long relied on funds from other ideological allies, including private donations and groups in Turkey, Kuwait and Malaysia, former U.S. counterterrorism officials said.
Hamas also has donors in other parts of the world, including the U.S., according to Treasury reports. From 1995 until 2001, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development operated as the chief U.S. fundraising arm of Hamas, sending more than $12 million “with the intent to willfully contribute funds, goods, and services to Hamas,” according to federal court documents and government assessments.
After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas gained another major benefactor, the Qatari government.
Hamas won an election over Fatah, the Palestinian ruling party, in early 2006, in part because residents believed the existing authorities could not be trusted to administer funds properly. Hamas ultimately seized complete control of Gaza and has ruled without an election since 2007.
As conditions continued to deteriorate for residents of the enclave, Israel, the U.S. and the international community turned to gas-rich Qatar to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
Qatari officials began carrying millions of dollars in cash in suitcases through Israel’s Erez border crossing into Gaza, with the permission of the Israeli government.
For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been in power for much of the time after Hamas began ruling Gaza, the policy was meant to bring some degree of stability to Gaza and bolster Israel’s security. It also, however, helped fuel the bitter rivalry between Hamas and Fatah, which continued to govern the occupied West Bank.
Under the arrangement, between 2012 and 2021, Qatar provided $1.49 billion in financial aid to support projects for Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a Qatari official told NBC News.
During the past two decades, Western governments tended to focus more on cutting off the finances of other Islamist organizations while Hamas received a lower priority, former U.S. officials said. Gerald Feierstein, who worked in the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau from 2006 to 2008, said Hamas was not perceived as a direct threat to the U.S.
“From a counterterrorism perspective, people weren’t really focused on Hamas,” said Feierstein, now at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington. “At that point, the focus was really AQ," he said, referring to al Qaeda.
In the past few years, however, Western governments have disrupted some sources of Hamas financing.
In August 2020, U.S. authorities seized millions of dollars and more than 300 cryptocurrency assets linked to groups, including Hamas, as part of a series of terrorism-related actions. The Treasury Department’s latest sanctions targeting Hamas operatives include a Gaza-based virtual currency exchange, Buy Cash Money and Money Transfer Company, and its operator used to collect small-dollar donations.
In 2021, Israel seized several cryptocurrency wallets, including Buy Cash, believed to be controlled by Hamas. At the time, Elliptic, a research analytics firm estimated those wallets had received more than $7.7 million in crypto. The same year, the German government banned a network of ostensibly charitable organizations of the Ansaar International e.V. network, which had collected donations for terror organizations, including Hamas, and included real estate assets.
Then came the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
Jul 19, 2024 · According to Peace Now, a nonprofit organisation that monitors land confiscation in the West Bank, Israel has seized 23.7sq km (9.15sq miles) of Palestinian land this year while Israel’s war on...
May 31, 2024 · Israel has received hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid in the post–World War II era, a level of support that reflects many factors, including a U.S. commitment to...
Jul 11, 2024 · In 2024, Israel illegally seized 23.7sq km (9.15 sq miles) of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, amid its ongoing war on Gaza. That’s more than the land it took over the past 20 years...
The international community has sent billions of dollars in aid to the Gaza Strip in recent years to provide relief to the more than 2 million Palestinians living in the isolated, Hamas-ruled...
