According to 2022 data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), 65% of the population of the Gaza Strip 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 from Israel’s Channel 13 described a routine of parties, luxurious homes and cars for Hamas leaders and their families and pointed out that the group has at least three billionaires: Mousa Abu Marzook (who has an estimated net worth at US$3 billion), Ismail Haniyeh (between US$3 and 4 billion) and Khaled Mashal (US$5 billion).
Marzook is a senior member of the Hamas leadership and was vice president of the terrorist group’s political directorate between 1997 and 2014; Haniyeh has been the directorate’s president 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 fortunes of Hamas leaders have several origins.
A first source is donations from relatives of deceased people, charities and other Islamic countries. The analyst also cited campaigns to raise money among wealthy Muslims in the United States, which helped to create several funds with stratospheric values.
In large part, these donations are diverted down the drain of corruption and one of the ways is ghost employees: supporters abroad receive lists with fictitious names of employees of the Gaza administration, whose salaries end up pocketed by senior members of Hamas.
“What stands out about Palestinian leaders over the years is their motto ‘Get rich quick.’ These leaders have no shame. They take control of crucial industries, such as communications and gasoline, as soon as they take the reins,” said Elad, who highlighted the culture of blatant corruption among 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 that arrive illegally in the strip. 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 for two years in the United States in the 1990s for supporting terrorism and was extradited to Jordan), Haniyeh and Mashal live in Qatar, far from the daily deprivation 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 imposing glass facades and being welcomed with a red carpet by senior officials in the country, host of the World Cup. last year.
Akram Atallah, a columnist for the West Bank-based newspaper Al-Ayyam, told Arab Weekly that Hamas leaders contained the uprising of the Gaza population through the “duality” of being both a government and a “militant group.” .
“When criticized for not providing basic services, [o
Hamas] claims to be a resistance group. When criticized for imposing taxes, it says it is a legitimate government”, he argued.
However, Atallah stated that the tension between terrorist leaders and the people of Gaza, due to this difference between their wealth and the enclave’s poverty, had already been growing before the war that broke out after Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
“Hamas, as an authority, has been exposed. The people discovered that their leaders live much better than they do,” he said.
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