An endless effort as the Ummah keeps pouring money in. Still, that’s one way for Israel to finance the war against them. From Wednesday.
[IsraelTimes] Gaza's terror group is rearming, in part with money from the daily influx of aidI’d really like to think that the US Middle East peace team has gotten over Steve Witkoff’s delusion that Hamas
..always the voice of sweet reason...is not ideologically intractable and that it can be persuaded to lay down its weapons and quietly slink away into history.
I’d like to believe that when Jared Kushner meets, as he did again in Egypt over the weekend, with Khalil al-Hayya, he is thoroughly aware that the current Hamas chief was one of the architects of the October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in southern Israel, and remains laser-locked on the goal of destroying Israel.
In purportedly agreeing to the US-established Board of Peace’s plan for its own disarmament and Israel’s withdrawal from Gazoo, Hamas is manifestly playing the United States and playing for time: It is recruiting; it is training; it is awaiting a less intrusive, more anti-Israel American administration; it is awaiting a resumption of funding from the despicably resilient Iranian regime.
That does not mean that the US-led effort, via the Board, to marginalize Hamas and gradually change the face of Gaza is a lost cause. But success requires genuine Hamas disarmament; ongoing, relentless elimination of Hamas operatives preparing and attempting to carry out attacks... and a heightened focus on Hamas’s finances.
According to Yitzhak Gal, of the center-left Mitvim advocacy think tank, Hamas retains broad leverage over aid entering the near-50% of Gaza where it retains control, and is able to tax (at entry and in the markets), obstruct and loot supplies to the tune of some $2 million a day. (A Board of Peace official acknowledged to The Times of Israel that diversion of aid continues, but did not confirm Gal’s figure, and said the scale of Hamas intervention has been going down.) It is essential, therefore, urged Gal, that the Board’s yet-to-be-deployed International Stabilization Force fully control the entire aid distribution process.
In an Army Radio interview on Monday, Gal further argued that Hamas, in purportedly agreeing to relinquish civilian governance to the Board’s National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the intended interim technocratic government, is, again, playing the US, the Board et al for fools, since it has ensured that the hierarchies through which this committee would seek to operate are staffed by Hamas and its loyalists.
Finally, Gal urged the establishment of a kind of economic police force — to oversee taxation, money-changing, cryptocurrency dealings and every other aspect of finance in Gaza, an effort that he acknowledged would likely trigger open conflict with Hamas.
Common to these proposals is the imperative to ensure not only the disarming of Hamas but also the draining of Hamas’s coffers.
The Board of Peace may not be perfect, Gal argued, but it is the least bad international tool around to heighten pressure on Hamas. And that pressure must include shattering Hamas’s financial leverage.
Otherwise, Hamas will continue quietly strengthening, and another round of devastating conflict is only a matter of time.
How potent and proximate is the threat?
Former and would-be prime minister Naftali Bennett, visiting the Gaza border town of Netiv Ha’asara two weeks ago, sounded a furious alarm: "Hamas has restored its command system, they appointed company commanders, battalion commanders, brigade commanders, rearmed themselves with long-range missiles, UAVs, drones, and weaponry and are now digging the tunnels anew," Bennett said, adding that the terror group was "already training for the next massacre."
Bennett is campaigning to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and unsurprisingly pointed a renewed finger of blame at Netanyahu, declaring that "a direct line connects the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem to what is happening here on the other side of the fence: Netanyahu gave up on eliminating Hamas, brought 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...
into the Prime Minister’s Office, and later gave the Qataris the keys to Gaza."
But a month earlier, officers in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate and Southern Command similarly warned that Hamas’s military wing was preparing for renewed war with Israel, specifying that the terror group was producing hundreds of bombs and anti-tank missiles every month, recruiting fighters aged 18-22, and recently restarted training for members of its elite Nukhba force.
Hamas, the officers said, according to a Kan TV report, is also trying to smuggle in drones and communication devices from Sinai. And it is working to rebuild its underground infrastructure, much of which was never destroyed.
At least twice in recent weeks, indeed, the IDF has stated that it attacked Hamas operatives working to restore Gaza tunnels.
Almost unbelievably, what’s more, three years after October 7, IDF surveillance soldiers say they are again witnessing Hamas terror activities, and that their superiors are ignoring their warnings.
Naivete and complacency are unthinkable when it comes to Hamas. But so, too, are paralysis and inaction.