The ground entry into Gaza is approaching according to all the signals, and the IDF soldiers may have a hard time noticing it, but under the streets of the impoverished Gaza Strip are pipes full of money. While Gaza is considered one of the poorest regions in the world, its leaders enjoy a life of luxury, often with a fortune of millions or billions of dollars.
Gaza suffers from an unemployment rate of over 60%. In 2022, the GDP per capita in Gaza is estimated at 1,257 US dollars, about a quarter of the GDP per capita of the West Bank (estimated at 4,458 dollars), according to a report issued by the World Bank. These figures make it one of the poorest places in the world. Many attribute the limited economic growth of the Strip to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade that came into effect in 2007 and imposed restrictions on goods entering or leaving the Strip. However, this argument ignores a fundamental issue for the situation in the Strip, which is the wealth of the Palestinian leadership.
The Hamas leadership built its wealth mainly through the booming tunnel industry, with Hamas officials imposing taxes, usually 20%, on all goods smuggled through the tunnels. Despite the secrecy of the tunnels themselves, their role in enriching Hamas and its supporters has long been no secret.
Today, more than half of the residents of Gaza live in severe poverty, but already in 2012 it was reported that there are about 600 millionaires living in Gaza who made their fortune thanks to the hundreds of underground tunnels along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Al Monitor newspaper then defined the trade in the tunnels as a factor that “gave birth to a new class of rich people who managed to accumulate a huge fortune in a short period of time” (according to the magazine De Tower).
Many of the senior members of the terrorist organization that controls Gaza maintain a low public profile, and some of them have spent considerable time of their lives evading assassination attempts by Israel. For years, their wealth was also considered a mystery. Today, quite a bit is already known about the way in which those born and raised in refugee camps turned into reclusive tycoons, but since the terrorist organization shocked Israel with the deadliest attack ever launched from Gaza, the questions surfaced anew.
Haniyeh’s children take advantage of the privileges
A few hours after the outbreak of the Hamas attack on Israel, the leader of Hamas and the one who pulls the strings, Ismail Haniyeh (61), was seen on video celebrating the invasion from his luxurious office in the capital of Qatar, while he and other senior Hamas officials cheered happily before prostrate on the floor, praising Allah (according to the Times of Israel ).
During his long years as a senior Hamas official, Zabr Haniyeh, who in 2017 was elected head of the organization’s political bureau, accumulated an impressive fortune, and in recent years (since 2019) he has lived in Qatar. His exact net worth is unknown, but as of today it is estimated at at least $5 million.
Haniyeh, who in 2018 was designated as a terrorist by the US State Department, acquired impressive properties over the years. In 2010, Haniye purchased a plot of land with an area of 2,500 square meters in Rimal, a coastal neighborhood in Gaza near the Shatti refugee camp where he grew up, for $4 million. He registered the land in his son-in-law’s name, according to the Egyptian magazine Rose Al-Yusuf.
Since then, according to the reports, Haniye purchased additional houses and also registered them in the names of some of his 13 children. One of his sons is even known in Gaza as Abu al-Akerat, or “the father of real estate”. The privileges of their status are exploited by Haniyeh’s children inside and outside. Since he obtained a Turkish passport, thanks to which he comes and goes from Gaza, the son invests in properties in Turkey (according to the report), and thus joined the business Meanwhile, the report added, Haniyeh’s children own generators and sell electricity inside Gaza, a rare commodity in the region that they themselves receive for free.
Already two years ago, the Jerusalem Post reported that intelligence information indicated that from the early 2000s until 2018, Hamas controlled about 40 commercial companies in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Algeria and Sudan. According to the report, most of the companies involved are in the real estate and infrastructure sectors. “Hamas chose to manage its secret investment portfolio in Turkey because of the country’s weak financial system, which allows it to hide its money laundering and tax violations from the regulatory bodies,” Double Check reported. The report is about the laundering of assets worth about 500 million dollars.
“Hanya has a reputation of Hamasnik bourgeoisie and his family lives in luxury” | Idan Eretz
“The political arm of Hamas sits in Qatar, which is supposedly the foreign ministry of the organization. These are not Yahya Sinwar or Muhammad Daf who live in Gaza, nor Salah Arori, who is the head of the activity in the Yash. These are people like Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashal, who are supposedly The more legitimate face of Hamas.
They lobby, and obtain donations through ‘alternative organizations’ through which they see the Qatari network working.” This is how Professor Uzi Rabi, head of the Dayan Center for the Study of the Middle East and Africa at Tel Aviv University, explains to Globes.
Senior Hamas officials in Qatar do indeed live a life of luxury, but this becomes apparent to them in an internal review: “There is criticism from Gazans, that the Haniyeh was in Gaza and fled. ‘Ismail, where are you? Your children went to attack in Otaf?’ A playboy and manager of estate projects with his son and his wife. But even under the leadership of Hamas in Gaza, Haniyeh has a reputation as a Hamas bourgeois. His family members lived until recently in the a-Rimal neighborhood where the ‘princes of Hamas’ live and they live in luxury and debauchery, and his son received favorable appointments “.
Israel’s need for the mediation of Qatar, which hosts senior members of Hamas’ political bureau, overwhelms the country’s complex ties in the heart of the Persian Gulf: with Hamas and Iran on the one hand and with Israel and the West on the other. Prof. Rabi explains Qatar’s strategy, and why it needs it: “Qatar is a country rich in oil and natural gas, but very small, and cannot compete militarily with anyone. But they managed to translate the money into security and high visibility, including in the last World Cup.”
Qatar’s method of creating international leverage is to “weave ties to controversial parties, so when the West needs them, it must go through them: when the US left Afghanistan, it had to make deals with the Taliban, and the best man was Qatar. Al Qaeda also carried out attacks in pro-Western Arab countries. They did not act against Qatar, and published what they wanted through Al Jazeera. Also Azmi Bashara at the time he became an assignee in Israel and became their advisor on Israeli and Palestinian affairs.”
“In the case of Hamas, there is a conscious decision to support them, and it pays off in the same way – we must go through them, as now with the kidnapped. Behind these things there is sophistication, sometimes malicious, with which freedom of maneuver is created, and Qatar is a champion in these things. All this shows that the Qataris are very sophisticated And make themselves consumed and required at every angle.”
Persian Gulf real estate and financial conglomerate
Haney is not alone. Towards the end of last year, more and more high-profile Hamas officials replaced Gaza with luxury hotels in Beirut, Doha and Istanbul (the Times of Israel reported at the time), where they maintain a life of luxury and luxury that the people of Gaza – whom they claim to represent – would not dare to dream of in their wildest dreams. most.
The person who leads Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar (60), has also amassed a considerable fortune, estimated at 1-3 million dollars according to the BBC. Sinwar, who was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp during Egypt’s rule in the Gaza Strip, is the founder of the Hamas security service. Although in 1988 he was sentenced to four life sentences, he was released in the Shalit deal, and returned to his position as a senior leader of the organization. In 2017 he was appointed the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Apart from them, there is also someone who is known to the Palestinians as “The Brain”, and to the Israelis as “The Cat with Nine Souls”, and now also as the one who planned the latest terrorist attack alongside Niyyah. For years, Muhammad Daf has been considered one of the most wanted Hamas officials in Israel, and one of the most elusive. To date, a total of three photos of Def have been published: one dates from around his 20s, in the second he is masked, and in the third only his shadow is visible.
Daf (58, born Muhammad Masri), who leads the Ezz Al-Din Al-Ksam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, received his nickname thanks to his having evaded seven Israeli assassination attempts, the last one in 2021. According to media sources, as of June 1, 2023, Def’s estimated net worth is approximately $5 million.
Khaled Mashal (67), who was born in Silwad in the West Bank, then under Jordanian control, also played a central role in the terrorist organization. Already in 1992, Mashal was a leading factor in establishing the core of the Hamas leadership, and eventually rose to the top. Like Haniyeh and others, he also lives today in Qatar, and is known as someone who invested much of his fortune in Egyptian banks and real estate projects in the Persian Gulf countries, which led to a massive accumulation of capital. He is considered one of the richest, his personal fortune was estimated a decade ago at several billion according to Publications in Arab countries, and today it is valued at 5 billion dollars.
Mashal’s deputy, Dr. Musa Abu Marzouk, who was previously considered the number 2 man in Hamas, has long since established his position on the organization’s list of tycoons. Back in the early 1990s, Marzouk started a fund-raising campaign in the US among wealthy Muslims, and at the same time founded several Banking establishments, this is what Col. (res.) Dr. Moshe Elad, a lecturer in the Middle East Department at the Western Galilee Academic College, previously told Globes. According to him, Marzouk itself has become a conglomerate of 10 financial enterprises that give loans and make investments.
The ruler of Qatar, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamed Al Thani, presents Messi with the robe and the victory trophy in the World Cup / Photo: Associated Press, Martin Meissner
The means to circumvent international sanctions: crypto
In addition to the tunnel tax industry, a global financing network and international businesses, senior Hamas officials have found a means to circumvent international sanctions – cryptocurrencies, Reuters recently reported.
Matthew Levitt, an American expert on counter-terrorism, estimated in an interview with Reuters that the bulk of Hamas’s budget, which is more than $300 million, came from taxes on businesses, as well as from Iran, Qatar and charitable organizations. Hamas, which is sanctioned by the US and the UK for example as a terrorist organization, is increasingly dealing with cryptocurrencies to avoid international restrictions, Levitt said at the time.
Tom Robinson, co-founder of the blockchain research firm Elliptic, told Reuters that Hamas has been good at “using crypto to finance terrorism.” Thus, after the fighting in May 2021, crypto addresses controlled by Hamas received more than $400,000, TRM Labs told Reuters. But according to the report, after multiple losses this year and following the ability to track transactions in the Cryptocurrency account system, senior Hamas officials said they would stay away from these currencies. It is likely that the losses in crypto will be easily compensated thanks to the support of Iran, which significantly increased the annual funding for the military wing of Hamas in the last year from 100 million dollars to about 350 million dollars.