'Financially solid': Hamas revenues set to withstand war with Israel
Hamas has been the focus of a relentless Israeli onslaught in Gaza but with resilient and diverse finances, it is expected to have a significant war chest at its disposal as the conflict drags on.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annihilate the Palestinian Islamist movement behind the October 7 attack — the deadliest in the country's history.
The gunmen killed 1,139 people — most of them civilians — according to Israel, and took an estimated 250 hostages back to Gaza, where 129 are still believed to be held.
Over the past two months 18,800 people — mostly women and children — have been killed by Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip, according to authorities in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory.
But as Israel pursues its military objective, undermining Hamas's revenue streams will also prove a formidable task.
«Hamas is financially solid,» Jessica Davis, president of the Canadian group Insight Threat Intelligence, told AFP.
«In the last decade, if not longer, they have been creating a resilient finance network,» she said, explaining the group had set up investments and sources of income in many countries without being disrupted.
These sources include «small businesses and real estate» in countries such as Turkey, Sudan and Algeria, she added.
Hamas also relies on an informal network of donations.
It has become «very good at developing and operating a very complex system of money changers», said Yitzhak Gal, an Israeli expert on the Palestinian economy, explaining the exchanges run through Turkey, the UAE, Europe and the United States.
The number of donors has not necessarily decreased since October 7.
«Despite its
