Hamas has profited by $120-$200 million so far during the war from taxing humanitarian aid

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy published an article by respected Israeli analyst Ehud Yaari about how Hamas is positioning itself to remain in power as a major military force after the current war.

With thousands of its fighters still alive, Hamas is feverishly searching for new ways to stay in charge once a ceasefire is in place. Behind the facade of a Palestinian alliance, it has offered to relinquish civilian control—but only for the sake of refreshing its military arsenal, rebuilding its tunnel networks, and recruiting fresh manpower.

If Palestinian factions not directly involved in the war agree to provide such cover by forming a new Hamas-backed administration, it would make Israel’s continued task of pursuing the group’s fighters much more complicated. Even if Hamas was not formally part of said government, the flow of international aid to such a body would still benefit Hamas’s armed “wing,” which has invented many methods to cut profits from the local economy over the years. For example, according to estimates by the author and other researchers, the group has already gleaned around $120-200 million from taxing humanitarian convoys during the current war.

This Hamas tax on what is meant to be humanitarian goods is something everyone sort of knows about and practically.no one discusses. It, along with stopping arms smuggling to Hamas, is a major reason why Israel took over the area of the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt.

Yaari's estimate appears to be quite conservative. The amount of aid that entered Gaza so far during the war is approaching $2 billion, and this estimate appears to assume about a 10% tax on humanitarian goods,  something that UN agencies certainly know about and turn a blind eye to. 

To put it another way, the estimate would indicate a tax of about $5,000 on each of the 26,000 humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza counted by the UN during the war. This is an amount that would be overlooked since it appears to be part of the overhead costs of  distributing food and medicine, but enough for Hamas to continue its fighting.

Things are not good in Gaza for civilians. But the exaggerated attention to Gaza suffering, compared to other humanitarian crises worldwide, allows Hamas and its allies to appeal to the international community to send billions in aid - and this aid helps fund Hamas' war effort and desire to remain in power indefinitely. This explains why, even though the amount of aid entering Gaza has increased since Israel took over all the crossings, the UN and NGOs keep insisting that things are worse - because they want to keep things the way they have been. 

The world is funding Hamas. 

(h/t Irene)

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