Iran, Turkey, Qatar, the European Union, and the United States—some of them have been probable, others possible contributors to the strengthening of Hamas, a democratically elected Palestinian political party, and—at the same time—a terrorist organisation that has vowed to annihilate Israel.
After Hamas launched its all-out attack against Israel on Saturday, October 7th, analysts were bewildered at how a group that had in previous years only been able to launch badly built rockets into Israeli territories, harming hardly anyone, was able to carry out such a massacre.
As the German publication Die Welt points out in its analysis, the infiltration of Israel was planned and carried out with such military precision that foreign intervention cannot be ruled out. The main suspect is Iran, whose leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday denied involvement but said, “We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack on the Zionist regime.”
A U.S. State Department report from 2020 found that Iran had provided about $100 million annually to Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas, and last year Ismail Haniye, chairman of Hamas’s Political Bureau, publicly stated that the group had received about $70 million from Iran that year and that it used the money to build rockets. The Wall Street Journal, citing senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group from Lebanon, recently wrote that Iranian security officials actually helped plan Hamas’s attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last week. According to Die Welt, Iran smuggles materials needed to assemble rockets through tunnels leading from Egypt and covertly via sea routes.
Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary elections and, in 2007, violently seized control of the Gaza Strip from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA is dominated by the rival Fatah movement, which administers semi-autonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israel responded to the Hamas takeover with a blockade of Gaza, restricting the movement of people and goods in and out of the territory to keep the group from developing weapons. Hamas has a military wing known as the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades that has conducted many anti-Israel attacks since the 1990s. The U.S. State Department, the European Union, and other Western countries have designated Hamas a terrorist group.
Hamas needs foreign support and gets it from countries like the small but wealthy nation of Qatar, which hosts many exiled Hamas leaders, like Ismail Haniye, and allows the group to organise meetings and conferences in its capital, Doha. Qatar is said to have given $360 million in financial support to Hamas last year, intended for building hospitals and new roads.
Turkey is another strong backer of the Palestinian cause, and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan didn’t explicitly condemn Hamas for its attack, but called on both parties “to act with restraint.” According to Israeli allegations, Turkey allowed Hamas to open an office in Istanbul, from where the group has allegedly organised and financed terror activities, and Turkey has also allowed hundreds of Hamas members to obtain Turkish passports so they could travel to Europe more easily.
Besides several state governments funding Hamas, a significant amount pours in from Islamic charities mainly in Gulf countries, and the organisation is also supported by a range of nonstate initiatives and foundations, some of which are based in Germany.
The debate around the funding of humanitarian projects in Gaza by the EU has also flared up in recent days with the attack by Hamas on Israel. As we reported, Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi announced on Monday that Brussels was ready to suspend the nearly €700 million in aid that was due for Palestine this year, but foreign ministers of EU member states on Tuesday decided that financial support for the Palestinian Authority will not be interrupted because of Hamas’ attack. Josep Borrell said that “the suspension of the payments—punishing all the Palestinian people—would have damaged the EU interests in the region and would have only further emboldened terrorists.” The Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said, “We cannot confuse Hamas, which is in the list of EU’s terrorist groups, with the Palestinian population, or the Palestinian Authority, or the United Nations’ organisations on the ground.”
The European Commission clarified that humanitarian aid would continue and that it would carry out a review to “ensure that no EU funding indirectly enables any terrorist organisation to carry out attacks against Israel.”
However, as an analysis by the Indian publication The Economic Times points out:
Since Hamas runs the administration in Gaza, the area ruled by it has no transparency, [so] it’s hard to trace where each dollar given in aid goes. The creation of social infrastructure and welfare networks by Hamas in Gaza is also seen as a strategic ploy to hide and fund its terror activities behind a humanitarian ruse.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the United States believe the administration of President Joe Biden has also contributed to the attack on Israel. In September, the administration allowed the transfer of $6 billion in frozen assets to Iran in exchange for the release of five Americans. The White House stressed at the time that Iran could only use the funds for “food, medicine, medical equipment that would not have a dual military use,” but Iran publicly boasted they would deploy the cash “wherever we need it,” writes the New York Post. Former President Donald Trump—running for re-election in next year’s Republican primaries—said: “Sadly, American taxpayer dollars helped fund these attacks.” His rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, said, “Iran has helped fund this war against Israel, and Joe Biden’s policies that have gone easy on Iran has [sic] helped to fill their coffers.”Under Trump’s presidency, the United States cut more than $200 million in aid to the Palestinians, with the State Department citing Hamas’ control of Gaza as part of its justification for reallocating the funds. Joe Biden reversed the decision in 2021.
