The Business of Terror: Who funds Hamas, how does it get weapons?

Hamas launched the deadliest attack against Israel in 50 years. They outfoxed the country’s sophisticated security system and its famous intelligence. The Palestinian terrorist group invaded Israel by air, land, and sea, massacring people in border villages and taking hundreds in captivity. Six days after the attacks, the horrors of Hamas continue to unfold. The death toll in the attack is mounting each day – it’s now at 1,200. In retaliation, Israel is relentlessly bombarding the Gaza Strip , controlled by the militant group, killing 1,200, leaving 3,38,000 displaced and reducing large parts of the enclave to rubble. Yet Hamas refuses to back down. Its rocket strikes from Gaza targetting neighbouring Israeli locations continue. But how are the militants taking on their far more powerful enemy? Who is backing them and how do they get weapons? We explain. How does Hamas operate? In 2006, a year after the Israeli military withdrew from Gaza, elections were held in the enclave. Hamas emerged victorious and formed a government with Fatah, the political party that governs 40 per cent of the occupied West Bank. However, in 2007, the government collapsed and Hamas took full control of the Gaza Strip. There have been no elections since. Hamas seeks the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. It opposes the peace process with Israel and, in its charter, demands the country’s destruction. It has used violence to achieve its aim, which includes conducting cross-border raids using tunnels and shooting rockets across the Gaza border. Senior Hamas leaders reportedly operate out of Qatar and some out of Turkey. Their previous hosts were Syria but the Palestinian group had a fallout with Damascus after Palestinian refugees participated in the 2011 uprising that preceded the Syrian Civil War, according to a report in PBS. [caption id=“attachment_13239062” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Israelis take cover from incoming rocket fire from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, southern Israel, on Wednesday. AP[/caption] Who funds Hamas? Iran is a big backer of Hamas. According to a US government report from 2020, Iran provides up to $100 million annually in combined support to Palestinian terrorist groups, mainly Hamas, and the smaller ones such as Palestine Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, reports The Economic Times. In an interview with Al-Jazeera last year, Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh revealed that Iran paid a total of $70 million to the Palestinian group to help it develop missiles and defence systems. He added that while different nations finance the Hamas, Iran was its biggest donor. Turkey has been supporting Hamas since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power. While this is more on the political front, a foreign bank based in Istanbul (Kuveyt Turk bank) has been financing the terror group, a US court ruled in 2020. Palestine expatriates and private donors in the Persian Gulf provide funding to Hamas. “In addition, some Islamic charities in the West have channelled money to Hamas-backed social service groups, prompting asset freezes by the US Treasury,” the PBS report says.

Israel and Egypt have largely closed their borders with Gaza after Hamas took over in 2007, which restricts the movement of goods and people in and out of the enclave. Hamas taxes goods imported into Gaza and has collected more than $12 million per month as of 2021. Around 80 per cent of Gaza’s population of two million depends on humanitarian aid. Jerusalem has allowed Qatar to provide hundreds and millions of dollars in aid to Gaza through Hamas. Other aid reaches the strip through the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority (PA). However, a Jerusalem Post report from 2021 said that the misuse of funds for Gaza is rampant. Foreign aid, it says, is “susceptible to mismanagement and diversion to terrorism”. According to an Axios report, in June 2021, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s political leader in Gaza, rejected a UN proposal to finance the enclave’s reconstruction using a new monitoring mechanism to prevent terrorist activity. It cited the contention of Western diplomats that Sinwar turned down the proposal because he would be unable to use the cash as he saw fit. [caption id=“attachment_13239072” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Mourners react beside the grave of Mapal Adam, during her funeral in Tel Aviv. Adam was killed by Hamas militants on Saturday as they carried out an unprecedented, multi-front attack that killed over 1,000 Israelis. AP[/caption] How does Hamas get its weapons? Hamas has been using rockets and missiles against Israel. In the recent assault, it also used drones to drop explosives into Israeli territory. The attacks are launched from Gaza, which has been cut off from the rest of the world since Hamas seized control. Israel controls its airspace and shoreline and all the goods that cross its border. How do militants get their hands on weapons? A CNN report quotes the CIA’s World Factbook as saying, “Hamas acquires its weapons through smuggling or local construction and receives some military support from Iran.” The Islamic Republic has been smuggling weapons into the enclave using cross-border tunnels and boats that manage to escape the blockade. The tunnels have been used to transport arms including longer-range systems. “Iran has also been shipping Hamas its more advanced… ballistic missiles via sea, in components for construction in Gaza,” Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute told CNN. [caption id=“attachment_13239052” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades is the military wing of Hamas. File photo/AFP[/caption] Iran also helps Hamas to manufacture weapons. According to a Lebanon-based senior Hamas official, the terror group has factories in Gaza that produce rockets, rifles, bullets and more, CNN reports. Ali Baraka, head of Hamas National Relations Abroad told Russia Today’s Arabic-news channel RTArabic, “We have local factories for everything, for rockets with ranges of 250 km, for 160 km, 80km, and 10 km. We have factories for mortars and their shells.… We have factories for Kalashnikovs (rifles) and their bullets. We’re manufacturing the bullets with permission from the Russians. We’re building it in Gaza.” Hamas also recycles Israeli munitions which are used in airstrikes on Gaza. There are often unexploded bombs and artillery shells lying around the enclave after an Israeli bombardment. These are collected by Hamas’s military wing, according to activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. In an article published in Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Fikra Forum in 2021, he wrote, that Hamas’ Qassam Brigades stores “the unexploded ordnances and will take large numbers of them to workshops for recycling the explosive materials inside them. These raw substances are subsequently used to create rocket propellers and explosive warheads for rockets.” [caption id=“attachment_13238932” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A view of the rubble of buildings hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Jabalia, Gaza Strip. AP[/caption] Hamas has a strong backer in Iran and it has over the years improvised. Its latest attack on Israel, which took the world by shock, shows how deadly and menacing this terror organisation can be. With inputs from agencies