Although known for years
Israel and the USA ignored Hamas’ million-dollar deals
December 17, 2023, 9:38 a.m
The radical Islamic Hamas was apparently able to amass a gigantic fortune over the years without being touched. Although the deals were known in many areas, neither the USA nor Israel responded with sanctions. This is revealed by a media report.
According to a newspaper report, Israel’s security authorities uncovered Hamas’s million-dollar transactions years ago without the Israeli or US governments taking immediate action. As the New York Times reported, in 2018 security authorities were able to obtain detailed lists of assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars from a computer belonging to a senior Hamas official.
Nevertheless, none of the Hamas companies listed there had been sanctioned for years. There was also no pressure put on Turkey, the hub of the financing network, to close it. Hamas controlled mining, chicken breeding and road construction companies in Sudan, two skyscrapers in the United Arab Emirates, a real estate developer in Algeria and a real estate company listed on the Turkish stock exchange. The newspaper wrote that the documents had been viewed.
The authorities passed them on within their own government and in Washington, but nothing happened. It is now known in both countries that the flow of money from the Islamist Hamas helped it build its military infrastructure and thus laid the foundations for the attacks on October 7th.
Even after sanctions were finally imposed on the financing network in 2022, people linked to Hamas could have made millions by selling shares in a company that was on the sanctions list, it said. There are fears that such flows of money will enable Hamas to rebuild its structures after the end of the Gaza war.