Cash-Strapped Hamas Can’t Pay Its Fighters 

This week, Israeli’s military reaffirmed it is staying in Gaza indefinitely, as its ultra-controversial anti-Hamas operation continues in the civilian-packed Palestinian enclave.

“Unlike in the past,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized,” Defense Minister Israel Katz began in a Wednesday statement. The IDF “will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and [Israeli] communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza – as in Lebanon and Syria.”

As the IDF settles in for the long-haul while battling a Hamas and Islamic Jihad insurgency in the Strip, the Islamic militants reportedly retain 75% of their tunnel networks, and some 40,000 fighters and the ability to produce their own weapons.

However, a fresh report in The Wall Street Journal finds that Hamas is increasingly cash-strapped, and it is having trouble paying its rank and file fighters. Funding from both West Bank-based institutions, as well as from external backers, have been drying up and increasingly blocked.

The group is increasingly turning to theft of inbound humanitarian shipments, which have been entering the enclave sporadically, and based on what Israeli forces allow:

Israel last month cut off supplies of humanitarian goods to the enclave, some of which Hamas had been seizing and selling to raise funds, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. Its renewed offensive has targeted and killed Hamas officials who played important roles in distributing cash to cadres and sent others into hiding, Arab intelligence officials said.

In recent weeks, the Israeli military has said it killed a money changer who was key to what it called terrorist financing for Hamas as well as a number of top political officials in rapid succession.

The report observes this has resulted in a “debilitating squeeze” for Hamas finances. Currently Hamas is still presenting itself as the only government over the Gaza Strip, which Israel is seeking to put a permanent end to.

“Salary payments to many Gaza government employees have ceased, while many senior Hamas fighters and political staff began receiving only about half of their pay midway through last month’s Ramadan holy period, the intelligence officials said. Rank-and-file Hamas fighters’ pay had been averaging around $200 to $300 a month, they said,” WSJ writes.

And apparently due to the war, external support has also dried up, as the IDF has sought to block physical cash from going in and out of the Strip, and this has impacted funding from the Gulf as well as Iran.

“Hamas, which controls Gaza’s civilian government, got monthly cash transfers of $15 million from Qatar before the war,” WSJ continues. “It also has raised funds from places including western Africa, South Asia and the U.K., building up a stockpile of some $500 million, much of it in Turkey, according to Western and Arab officials.”

This doesn’t mean the Hamas insurgency targeting occupying IDF troops will stop anytime soon, but it could begin to be a serious impact on morale. Still, the situation is likely long past the point of the Islamist fighters having “nothing to lose”.