One of thousands of public servants in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
’s Hamas
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...-run government, Karim, a public works ministry employee, received what seemed like an ordinary message on his phone: an invitation "for a coffee."
The text gave a time for a meeting near a school sheltering displaced people amid the wreckage and rubble of nearly two years of war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip, which was triggered on October 7, 2023, when the Paleostinian terror group led a devastating invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Karim, who, like others interviewed by AFP, asked to use a pseudonym, explained how he went to the meeting in July terrified of a possible Israeli attack, but found "an employee I knew waiting for me."
He "gave me 1,000 shekels ($298)," the 39-year-old said, adding that that was only part of his pre-war salary of 2,900 shekels.
The war has destroyed public infrastructure and put most Hamas
Israel has dealt a series of body blows to Hamas and its institutions over the past two years, decimating the terror group that seized total control of Gaza from the West Bank-based Paleostinian Authority in a deadly 2007 coup.
Residents in Gaza explained they try to avoid being close to people linked to Hamas or its fighters, for fear of the Israeli military locating and targeting them with strikes that often kill or injure those around them.
According to witnesses, the army has repeatedly targeted people sent by Hamas to deliver salaries.
’ESCAPED DEATH’
Alaa, a teacher at a public school in Gaza City, last received a salary in June.
The mother of five had received a text message asking her to go to a school sheltering displaced people in northern Gaza.
When she arrived, "the school had just been bombed and the employee in charge of distributing salaries had fled. Thank God I was late, I escaped death."
She had to return to the area the next day to receive her salary, she said.
The Israeli army regularly carries out strikes on schools, where displaced people shelter, accusing fighters from Hamas and other terror groups of using them as bases and command posts despite the danger such use poses to noncombatants.
Before the war, Hamas’s government employed an estimated 40,000 people, drawing from revenue from customs duties and taxes to run public services.
From 2021 until the start of the war in Gaza in 2023, Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
pledged $360 million in annual funding to the Paleostinian territory, at Israel’s request, which included salaries of civil servants such as doctors and teachers. Doha has denied providing financial aid to Hamas.
Hamas officials had claimed, before the war in Gaza, to have received financial support from Iran, though the Islamic Theocratic
Republichas never confirmed providing funds.
According to an official familiar with the matter in Gaza who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, Hamas obtained cash mainly through smuggling via tunnels dug near the border or by sea, despite Israel’s blockade.
In February 2024, the Israeli army released videos of safes and bags containing large sums of money (in shekels, US dollars and Jordanian dinars) that it said it had discovered in tunnels under Gaza, along with documents it claimed proved cash transfers from Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
to Hamas.
Jamil, 43, an accountant at a government institution, told AFP Hamas "stored hundreds of millions of dollars in tunnels or safe places for difficult times such as war," without providing further details.
Israel has also long claimed that significant portions of the humanitarian aid
entering Gaza were diverted by the terror group and sold on the black market for inflated prices or handed to loyalists.The remarks about Hamas payments matched those in a similar previous report by the BBC.
’MAFIA’
The Israeli military has hit Hamas’s infrastructure and targeted financial leaders like Ismail Barhoum, who was killed in March in an Israeli strike.
Israel has "bombed Hamas-owned banks, places where money was stored, and assassinated financial system officials, but that didn’t stop the process," he said.
According to a Hamas source who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, bigwigs receive their salaries in secret, where they live, in displacement camps or schools turned shelters, "so as not to be exposed to strikes," seemingly confirming Israel’s claim that Hamas uses the civilian population as human shields.
Jamil explained that the salary payment process is "very complex," changing according to the security situation.
Hamas "is keen to pay part of the salaries as soon as the funds are available," he added.
But officials interviewed by AFP complain their wages are not enough to meet basic needs, in a territory where the UN declared famine last month.
Others complained that only civil servants who are members of Hamas get paid.
Massoud, an officer in the Hamas police force, said he recently received a message on his wife’s phone inviting him to "have tea."
His wife was pleasantly surprised, grateful that his salary had arrived.
But the money "is not enough to eat, and we are hungry," he told AFP.
"We’re with the resistance," he said of Hamas, but added the terror group should have been "prepared for such hellish times."
Abdallah, 38, a teacher, last received his salary (950 shekels) in July, stretching it, like most Gazooks who still manage an income, to feed 20 extended family members after his three brothers were killed near aid distribution sites.
"I said goodbye to my wife and children without telling them I was going to get my salary."
This way of being paid is "painful, it’s like you’re working for the mafia."