Photo: IDF troops uncover multiple access points of Hamas’ intricate network of terror tunnels in Northern Gaza.
Hamas collected at least $500 million in annual taxes on goods that entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
Most of this money went towards building its military wing of Hamas (Ezz Al-Din Al-Qassem Brigades), not to the Gaza economy and its residents.
Hamas’s strategy was simple: External parties (such as Qatar, the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations, the European Union, etc.) would support the civilian economy, while Hamas would invest most of its tax income in building their military force – Producing and developing rockets and weapons, tunnels, etc.
The amount of cement that entered the Gaza Strip from the summer of 2014 to the year 2019 was enough to build 16 towers as high as the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai, the tallest building in the world.
The vast majority of this cement was used by Hamas to build its vast underground tunnel system, which the IDF is dealing with today.
Hamas utilizes the resources of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip not only for fuel and human shields, but it stole oxygen tanks intended for hospital use for its tunnel diggers working deep underground.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, 374 trucks aid trucks have entered Gaza since the start of the war.
One Response
How did Hamas get its hands on preformed, reinforced concrete structures with the Selah Betzurim written on them in Hebrew? (I saw them in several Hamas tunnel propaganda videos?
I’ll ask a question that I asked a senior attorney, in COGAT many years ago:
How does Israel let Hamas have dual purpose materials, e.g. ammonium nitrate which while intended for use as fertilizer can be used as explosives for missile warheads? BTW, despite his very senior rank, he didn’t have a coherent explanation.
What we have here are multiple failures going back decades, failures that have existential consequences.
BTW, I suggest pulling up the six page pdf” The Hamas Network in America: A Short History” from the George Washington Univ. Program on Extremism. Contrary to what Sarah Zehavit says, anti-semitism in the US is not solely a Jewish American problem.
Hamas/CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood is deeply entrenched in key venues in the US including national and local government, the media, and the universities. The US, the only nation that is, in the final analysis critical to Israel’s survival is an active front in the war against the Jewish State. U.S Jews are cowardly and inept, and have ignored the problem. Unfortunately, Israel has ignored the problem as well. Now in the eleventh hour everyone seems to be getting religion, but unfortunately it may be too late.