Amid a renewed Israeli offensive in Gaza, Hamas is facing a cash crunch and is struggling to come up with the funds to pay its fighters, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Last month, Israel halted the delivery of humanitarian goods to the territory, some of which Hamas had been commandeering and selling to raise money, Arab, Israeli, and Western officials told the outlet.
According to Arab intelligence, the revived military campaign has damaged Hamas' ability to distribute cash to its rank and file because many of the group's officials who handled such payments have been killed or gone into hiding.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recently said they killed a number of Hamas' senior political officials, as well as a money changer who played a key role in the militant group's financial operations.
As a result, Hamas has become increasingly insolvent.
"Even if they sit on large amounts of cash, their ability to distribute it would be very limited right now," Eyal Ofer, an open-source researcher on Gaza's economy, told the Journal.
Usually, Hamas would either have a courier deliver cash or would set up a payment disbursement area, Ofer said, pointing out that either scenario could "grab attention" from Israeli troops.
Intelligence officials the Journal spoke with said many Gaza government employees have not received their salary payments and many senior Hamas political staff and fighters had their pay cut in half in mid-March, which, for Muslims, was the holy month of Ramadan.
The average monthly pay for a Hamas fighter had ranged from $200 to $300 per month, the officials said.
Before the war, Hamas had reportedly received monthly cash infusions of $15 million from Qatar and also raised money from western Africa, South Asia, and the United Kingdom, with much of its $500 million reserve squirreled away in Turkey, Western and Arab officials told the Journal.
Israel throttled the transfer of physical cash into Gaza once the war began, which prompted Hamas to develop ways of getting around the restrictions.
The group initially took $180 million from branches of the Bank of Palestine and other financial institutions, according to current and former Palestinian officials, before moving on to build new income streams with the influx of humanitarian and commercial goods.
Arab, Israeli, and Western officials told the Journal that these new sources of cash have included imposing taxes on merchants, charging customs on trucks stopped at checkpoints and reselling seized goods. Hamas has also purchased humanitarian goods with overseas cash and sold the supplies in Gaza to change them back into money, they said.
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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