Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas (right), during a meeting this Sunday (15) in Qatar with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein AmirAbdollahian| Photo: EFE/EPA/Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran
According to 2022 data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), 65% of the Gaza Strip’s population lives in a situation of food insecurity and below the poverty line.
However, for the leaders of the terrorist group Hamas, which has controlled the enclave since 2007, hunger and poverty are nothing more than a very distant reality.
A June 2021 report by Israel’s Channel 13 described a routine of parties, luxurious homes and cars for Hamas leaders and their families, and noted that the group has at least three billionaires: Mousa Abu Marzook (who has an estimated net worth of $3 billion US dollars). ), Ismail Haniyeh (between $3 billion and $4 billion) and Khaled Mashal ($5 billion).
Marzook is a senior member of the Hamas leadership and served as vice president of the terror group’s political directorate between 1997 and 2014; Haniyeh has been President of the Board of Directors since 2017; and Mashal was his predecessor between 1996 and 2017.
In 2014, Moshe Elad, a Middle East expert at Western Galilee College, said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Globes that the fate of Hamas leaders had multiple causes.
A primary source is donations from relatives of the deceased, charities and other Islamic countries. The analyst also pointed to fundraising campaigns among wealthy Muslims in the United States that helped create several funds with stratospheric value.
To a large extent, these donations are diverted into the drain of corruption, and one of them is ghost employees: supporters abroad receive lists with fictitious names of Gaza government employees, whose salaries are ultimately pocketed by highranking Hamas members.
“What has stood out among Palestinian leaders over the years is their motto, ‘Get rich quick.'” These leaders have no shame. They take control of key industries such as communications and gasoline as soon as they take the reins,” said Elad, highlighting the culture of blatant corruption in the Hamas leadership.
Smuggling through the Gaza tunnels is another source of income for Hamas leaders, who charge fees of 25% of the value of goods entering the Strip illegally. Hamas also imposes taxes on all traders in Gaza and profits from real estate speculation after taking control of land in the enclave.
Marzook (who was imprisoned in the US for two years in the 1990s for supporting terrorism and was extradited to Jordan), Haniyeh and Mashal live in Qatar, far from the daily deprivations of Gaza residents.
In 2021, a report in The Arab Weekly newspaper highlighted that videos on social media showed Haniyeh playing football next to Qatar’s skyscrapers with impressive glass facades and a red one from senior officials in the country, which hosted the World Cup last year Carpet was welcomed.
Akram Atallah, a columnist for the West Bankbased newspaper AlAyyam, told Arab Weekly that Hamas leaders contained Gaza’s popular uprising through the “duality” of being both a government and a “militant group.”
“If you are criticized for not providing basic services, [o
Hamas] claims to be a resistance group. “If you criticize for imposing taxes, you are saying it is a legitimate government,” he argued.
However, Atallah explained that tensions between terrorist leaders and the people of Gaza had already been rising before the war that broke out after Hamas’ attacks on Israel because of this difference between their wealth and the enclave’s poverty.
“Hamas has been exposed as an authority. “People have discovered that their leaders live much better than they do,” he explained.
Infographics Gazeta do Povo[Clique para ampliar]