The new tycoons of the Arab world are the people of Hamas. How did they, who were born and raised in refugee camps and blackmailed the aid to the apparent nation, become the richest of the nation, raised from the nation and billionaires by any measure?
While most of the population in Gaza lives from hand to mouth. There are more than ten thousand rich people who are cut off from them and live a life of luxury by the standards of Saudi sheikhs. Most of the newly rich belong to the high ranks of Hamas, who steal into their pockets the huge donations that come from all over the world and are intended for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, for the improvement of the population’s life or for military strengthening through hundreds of millions from Iran. Hamas leaders do not separate the organization’s assets from their personal capital and treat these assets as their own.
Today, more than half of the residents of Gaza live in severe poverty, if only because of the terrorism that Hamas operates from there, which causes Israel to reduce the number of workers who come from Gaza to Israel.
The great majority of the founders of Hamas and its leaders were refugees or second generation refugees, and some of them were Egyptians mixed with Palestinians (children of mixed marriages), who had no money at all.
At the beginning of their path and the path of Hamas, the organization was nourished (not in its name as Hamas) by the military government in Israel, which fostered the Islamic associations that worked in the Strip for reasons of cultivating weight against the PLO. The day they started receiving donations from the world to the residents of Gaza, their phenomenal enrichment began.
The publications about the wealth of senior Hamas officials, especially those who live abroad, have long been no secret and information on the subject has been circulated in the Arab and international media for the past decade.
The more the decisions they make bring the residents of Gaza to a life of greater poverty and hardship, the more donations they receive and the faster they get rich from the donors’ mercy money.
Many of the leaders of the terrorist organization have already lost their shame and live abroad in great wealth, in an eye-popping lifestyle – they live in the most expensive hotels in the world, own houses and villas in prestigious neighborhoods in the world, show off their luxury cars, fly in private planes, dine in luxury restaurants and have huge equity :
According to the publications, the fortunes of Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Mashal and Musa Abu Marzouk are estimated at 1.5 to 5 billion dinars each. For comparison, according to World Bank data, the per capita income in the Gaza Strip in 2022 was about $1,200.
Who are the billionaire leaders:
The richest billionaire of all:
Ismail Haniyeh was elected in 2017 as the head of the political bureau of Hamas and since 2019 he lives in Qatar. His exact net worth is unknown, but as of today it is estimated at at least $4 billion.
According to the German Bild, Ismail Haniyeh is the richest of the Hamas leaders.
Although he claims that he lives only on olive oil and za’atar. Haniyeh, father of 13 children, lives in hotels in Qatar and Turkey, flies in private planes between Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow and Cairo.
A receipt published on social media shows that Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of Hamas, spent more than a million dollars at the Mandarin Hotel in Doha, Qatar in the “Guardian of the Walls” operation.
The invoice, shared by users from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Twitter, claimed that Haniyeh and his team stayed in 4 royal suites, 26 “royal” rooms, used spa services for $26.5 thousand and unspecified “other services” in the amount of $314 thousand. The alleged invoice reaches an astronomical sum of 1,045,604 million dollars.
The 3 sons of the head of the political bureau of Hamas who were killed in the northern Gaza Strip were military operatives of the terrorist organization, and it is claimed that one of them even lived in displaced persons camps. Unlike them, the eldest sons of Haniyeh are known for their flamboyant lifestyle, which is contrary to the Islamic agenda.
Two of Haniyeh’s sons – Maaz and Abdel Salam – are often documented on Instagram in hotels in Istanbul and Doha. An article about one of the sons was published in the Saudi newspaper “Ilaaf” a year ago, titled: “Maaz Haniyeh – a life of extravagance, alcohol and women”.
Maaz is a real estate magnate who is known in the Gaza Strip as “the father of real estate”, who owns apartments, villas and buildings. In Turkey, he is often seen by the side of well-dressed women and when he enjoys alcohol, despite his religious faith. Maaz was even photographed two years ago next to his father, the leader of Hamas, when he presented a new luxury car on the streets of Gaza.
His brother Abdel Salam was revealed to have transferred funds to his private account as part of his role as sports ambassador in the Shura Council of Hamas.
Haniyeh’s other children own generators and sell electricity inside Gaza, a rare commodity in the region that they themselves receive for free.
The Hamas leader also has three sisters who live in Israel:
Sabah, Leila and Khalidiya. Sabah got married at the age of 14 and helped her husband take care of his children as if they were her own. Today she is fighting cancer and receiving medical treatments. Her family members say that she has not spoken to her brother for many years. At the beginning of the month she was arrested, on suspicion of having contact with Hamas operatives and identifying with the terrorist organization, while carrying out acts of incitement and support for acts of terrorism in Israel.
According to the suspicion, since October 7, the nurse published posts on social networks that included incitement against the state. Through the networks, she even established contact with Israelis and with elements in Gaza, some of whom, according to the police’s assessment, are terrorist operatives. The Israelis who were in contact with her are also expected to be questioned. In addition, very large sums of money and gold were found in her home, so the Israeli tax authorities joined the investigation.
Khaled Mashal,
He served for about 21 years as the head of the political bureau of Hamas and was one of its founders, living like Haniyeh mainly in Qatar, and sometimes in Istanbul as well. In 1997 he was saved from an assassination attempt on his life in a failed Mossad operation in Jordan. In “Bild” it is written that when he left Syria he took 1.5 billion dollars from the Hamas offices in Damascus. In Israel it is estimated that between 4 and 5 billion dollars were defrauded.
Musa Abu Marzouk,
Deputy Head of the Political Bureau, moves mainly on the Damascus-Cairo axis. He lived for 14 years in the United States, and was arrested in 1994 for supporting terrorism. Two years later he was deported and moved to Jordan, from there to Syria and in 2012 to Cairo. According to the “Bild” his fortune was estimated at two billion dollars. According to the Israeli embassy in the US, he has 3 billion dollars.
When his sister fell ill in his film, he made sure she was hospitalized and received treatment at a hospital in Israel.
Abu Marzouk, has long established his position in the organization’s list of tycoons. Back in the early 1990s, Marzouk started a fund-raising campaign in the US among wealthy Muslims, and at the same time founded several banking enterprises. Marzouk itself has become a conglomerate of 10 financial enterprises that give loans and make investments.
Hisham Younis Kapisha ,
The “Bild” also mentions a largely unknown billionaire – Hisham Younis Kapisha , who is considered one of the main financiers of the terrorist organization. In 2022, he was included in the list of individuals on whom the United States imposes sanctions for “involvement in Hamas activities and holding key positions in several companies controlled by the organization.”
Salah Alaruri
Another senior Hamas official who often speaks out during the current round of fighting is Salah Al-Aruri. He was released as part of the Shalit deal, and today lives on the Lebanon-Turkey line. From there he makes sure to send threatening messages to Israel, like his colleagues, he does not have to deal with the consequences like the residents of the Gaza Strip. Undisputedly, he also became a billionaire who takes the funds he allocates to Gaza for himself.
Yahya Sivar, Hamas leader in Gaza
The person who leads Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar (60), has also accumulated considerable wealth, but there is no official information about the capital at his disposal.
Sinwar, who was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp during Egypt’s rule in the Gaza Strip, is the founder of the Hamas security service. Although in 1988 he was sentenced to four life sentences, he was released in the Shalit deal, and returned to his position as a senior leader of the organization. In 2017 he was appointed the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Muhammad Daf:
The one who is known to the Palestinians as “The Brain”, and to the Israelis as “The Cat with Nine Souls”, and now also as the one who planned the last terrorist attack alongside Neyah. For years, Muhammad Daf has been considered one of the most wanted Hamas officials in Israel, and one of the most elusive.
According to media sources, as of June 1, 2023, Def’s estimated net worth is approximately $30 million.
About 10,000 millionaires live in Gaza today – with 50 to 100 million dollars each
All the millionaires who live in Gaza are closely linked to Hamas, each of them has an average fortune ranging from 50 to 100 million dollars. Most of them make a living from companies in the fields of electricity, electronics, textiles, construction, real estate and hi-tech. Some of them are senior Hamas officials who were responsible for tunnels that smuggled weapons of all kinds, animals, food products, military equipment and furniture to Gaza for many years.
Hamas treasurer Al Khaldi purchased land in Rimal and in the Abu Mazen neighborhood for senior Hamas officials and its military arm. The money was laundered from the aid funds provided by the government in Qatar and the Gulf countries, which flowed for many years to restore infrastructure and build houses and schools in the Strip.
“Al Khaldi founded a real estate company that took care of senior officials, and lavished them with millions of dollars and luxury houses in Rimal,” revealed an official in Gaza, “They got rich and the people became poorer and more dependent on them.”
The millionaires take the money and leave Gaza:
Since Operation Safeguard, hundreds and thousands of the new millionaires from Gaza have left Gaza. They realized that they had nothing to look for there. Most of them turned to raise their children in the United States, the Gulf countries, and Western Europe in peace and safety. Others decided to move to Brazil and Colombia, and even Australia and New Zealand, with the help of family members living in these countries to help them acclimate to the new environment.
Most of them sold the villas to senior officials and those close to Hamas. The one who took care of mediating the deals is Al Khaldi.
As time goes by, more and more hundreds of rich people are leaving the Gaza Strip with huge fortunes in their hands that they made from the money donated to the residents of Gaza. The rich who remain are partly forced to operate under the protection umbrella of Hamas and pay them protection.
The residents are disgruntled:
A Gazan citizen strengthens the villas of the wealthy Hamas says – “Those who stay and have nowhere to run are the poor. They have no money, neither does their children have a future and they have no one to finance their plane tickets to leave Gaza.” All the money that was supposed to give them a better and higher quality life, or at least a reasonable welfare life, was taken by the leaders of Hamas.
The children of the Hamas leadership and their associates often have private teachers and doctors, they own Apple computers, Sony PlayStation 5, and wear branded clothes that their parents bought for them in prestigious department stores in Dubai and Qatar. They drive modern and shiny luxury cars like BMWs, Mercedes Jeeps and Toyotas, some of them own yachts in Qatar.
“They spend their pampering vacations in the summer on yachts and on trips to boutique hotels in Italy, Dubai and Spain. They have nothing to do in Gaza,” explained A. a Gaza resident who maintains one of the villas. “People in Gaza are very jealous of them. There were several cases where their houses were broken into and money and jewelry were stolen. Hamas treated the burglars and put them in prison.”
They robbed the public coffers and got rich at our expense,” enraged B., a resident of Gaza, “because in recent years there is a great hatred for Hamas, and for the large gaps that have grown over the years between the poor and the rich, when the middle class has almost been wiped out here.”
Why don’t they revolt?
Because those who rise up are executed, or at best arrested, the majority of the population depends on them for their livelihood. They are the ones who transfer crumbs from the big money that comes from the world, but even without these crumbs, we will die of hunger.
What are the sources of the money?
Pipes full of money pass under the streets of the poor Gaza Strip. While Gaza is considered one of the poorest regions in the world, its leaders enjoy a life of luxury, often with a fortune of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
The money flows in huge amounts to Gaza mainly through donations from around the world, mainly from the Gulf countries and other countries. The purpose of the donations is to improve the lives of the residents, but most of the money, first of all, goes to the private pockets of the leaders and activists of Hamas, then to the construction of the tunnels and the strengthening of terrorism, and only the small surplus goes to the real purposes for which it was intended.
Iran is one of the biggest donors to Hamas, and according to estimates it gives 100 million dollars a year to Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip. Turkey claims it only supports the political wing of Hamas, but it has also been accused of financing terrorist activities through aid diverted to the military wing.
The “Daily Mail” also detailed the estimates regarding the ways in which Hamas and its leaders amassed their wealth. “Historically, exiled Palestinians and private donors from the Middle East were the ones who funded the organization, along with Islamic funds in the West,” they wrote, mentioning alongside the fact that Israel allowed Qatar to transfer tens of millions of dollars of aid money to Gaza each month in cash.
Hamas raised its own income through the use of a comprehensive tunnel system, one of the goals of which was to bypass the Rafah crossing with Egypt in the southern Gaza Strip, and allow the introduction of food, medicine, fuel, money and, of course, weapons. Egypt allowed the import of goods, Hamas received about 15 million dollars per month in tax money from there.
Thanks to the hundreds of underground tunnels along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Al Monitor newspaper then defined the trade in the tunnels as a factor that “gave birth to a new class of rich people who managed to accumulate a huge fortune in a short period of time” (according to the magazine De Tower).
Hamas operatives built their wealth mainly through the booming tunnel industry, with Hamas officials imposing taxes, usually 20%, on all goods smuggled through the tunnels. Despite the secrecy of the tunnels themselves, their role in enriching Hamas and its supporters has long been no secret.
The means to circumvent international sanctions: crypto
In addition to the tunnel tax industry, a global financing network and international business, senior Hamas officials have found a way to circumvent international sanctions – cryptocurrencies, Reuters recently reported.
Matthew Levitt, an American expert on counter-terrorism, estimated in an interview with Reuters that the bulk of Hamas’s budget, which is more than $300 million, came from taxes on businesses, as well as from Iran, Qatar and charitable organizations. Hamas, which is sanctioned by the US and the UK for example as a terrorist organization, is increasingly dealing with cryptocurrencies to avoid international restrictions, Levitt said at the time.
Tom Robinson, co-founder of the blockchain research firm Elliptic, told Reuters that Hamas has been good at “using crypto to finance terrorism.” Thus, after the fighting in May 2021, crypto addresses controlled by Hamas received more than $400,000, TRM Labs told Reuters. But according to the report, after multiple losses this year and following the ability to track transactions in the Cryptocurrency account system, senior Hamas officials said they would stay away from these currencies. It is likely that the losses in crypto will be easily compensated thanks to the support of Iran, which significantly increased the annual funding for the military wing of Hamas in the last year from 100 million dollars to about 350 million dollars.
