Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu missed an opportunity to deprive Hamas of its funding sources years before last October’s fatal attack, according to former senior Israeli intelligence official Udi Levy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu missed an opportunity to deprive Hamas of its funding sources years before last October’s fatal attack, according to former senior Israeli intelligence official Udi Levy.
Levy told the BBC’s Panorama program that he advised Netanyahu to attack Hamas’s finances. He believes that this measure would have hindered the group’s military growth, but the necessary measures were not taken.
The prime minister’s office did not respond to the comments.
Hamas gunmen killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages in the October 7 attack last year when they invaded southern Israel. One hundred and thirty hostages remain missing.
According to the Hamas-administered Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Israel’s military response has already killed 29,000 Palestinians.
Levy was head of the war finance department of the Mossad – Israel’s secret service – until 2016. He claims to have told Netanyahu several times that Israel had the necessary means to destroy Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, “using only financial instruments”.
Levy says Netanyahu never responded to his proposal.
Asked whether he thinks there is a link between the prime minister’s alleged reluctance to attack Hamas’s finances and the October 7 attack, Levy is adamant.
“Yes, of course,” he replied. “There’s a good chance that… [teríamos] avoided [a entrada de] a lot of money” in Gaza and that “it is probably the monster built by Hamas”. [não seria] the same monster we faced on October 7th.”
Hamas would have needed “billions, not millions” of dollars, according to the former intelligence chief, to build hundreds of kilometers of tunnels under the Gaza Strip and pay for a military force estimated at 30,000 fighters.
Levy says he presented Netanyahu with a specific funding stream in 2014. It was an alleged multimillion-dollar investment portfolio that Israeli intelligence said was controlled by Hamas and operated in Turkey.
Levy claims that Netanyahu decided not to act on that information.
Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist and pledges to destroy it. The group is much more than a military force. It is a political movement, with financial support that extends far beyond the Gaza Strip.
“We talk about Qatar and Iran as major financiers,” says Levy, of his discussions with Netanyahu. “Turkey, in a way, is even more important, as it is a critical focal point for Hamas to manage [sua] financial infrastructures”.
BBC Panorama investigated documents obtained sometime before the October 7 attack, which reveal the extent of Hamas’s investment portfolio.
These documents represent an account of an eight-month period ending in early 2018. According to Israeli intelligence, they show how Hamas gets some of its money.
There are believed to be around 40 companies from the Middle East and North Africa in the portfolio, including countries such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, Gulf countries and also Turkey.
The alleged investments include everything from highway construction, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to tourism, mining, gold prospecting and luxury real estate projects.
As of 2022, six of the companies listed in the documents were designated by the U.S. Treasury as being owned or controlled by Hamas, directly or indirectly. The United States has limited its ability to do business through sanctions.
Alongside each listed company in the portfolio is what is believed to be the value of each holding company controlled by Hamas. For some companies the value reaches millions of dollars. The total value is almost $423 million (approximately R$2.1 billion).
It is argued that much of this value is linked to real estate.
Real estate investments retain their market value and have the potential to generate income in the form of rentals. It’s a “perfect way” for an organization like Hamas to manage its finances, says Tom Keatinge, founding director of the Center for Financial Crime and Security Studies (CFCS) at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think tank (research and debate centre) based in London.
One of the companies sanctioned by the United States is the Turkish real estate company Trend GYO.
In the 2018 document this company is referred to several times as Anda Turk. The documents show that this was the company’s previous trading name, before it changed its name to Trend and began to be listed on the stock exchange in the Turkish capital, Istanbul.
The October 7 attacks – or, as Hamas calls them, “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” – were recently praised by former Trend president Hamid Abdullah al-Ahmar. He left the post in 2022, but remains at the head of the company that owns Trend.
At a conference in Istanbul in January 2024, al-Ahmar was filmed saying: “We meet… when the Aqsa flood is at its peak, a thunderous, crushing flood that will never stop until the occupation of beloved Palestine will not be defeated”.
He then called on the conference to “work to criminalize Zionism as a racist and terrorist movement.”
BBC Panorama wrote to al-Ahmar but received no response. Trend reported that the US Treasury’s allegations about the company’s ties to Hamas are “unfair and unfounded.”
Turkish authorities said they investigated Trend and found no “abuse of our country’s financial system” and that Turkey complies with international financial standards.
But Hamas also has several other sources of long-term financing.
One of the earliest and most important financiers is Yahya Sinwar, now head of Hamas’ political arm in Gaza.
Israel claims he began raising money for Hamas while he was a prisoner in the country. In 1988, Sinwar was arrested for killing Palestinians suspected of spying for Israel.
Former Israeli security agency official Micha Koubi says he was interrogated for more than 150 hours. He says Sinwar managed to establish relations with Iran by sending secret messages from prison.
In 2007, a year after Hamas was elected to take power in the Gaza Strip, Israel and Egypt tightened their blockade on the region. The two neighboring countries have expressed concern about their security.
For Koubi, Sinwar’s contacts in Iran helped him break the blockade.
“He sent messengers to Iran to initiate contact,” Koubi says. “He asked them to send… weapons. And they agreed to help him [o Hamas] with everything they needed. It was just the beginning.”
Money for Hamas also came from Qatar, through legal and clandestine channels, according to Udi Levy.
Israel acknowledged that some of the money was delivered in kind with its approval. The funds were allocated to pay the salaries of Hamas government employees and provide humanitarian support to the population of the Gaza Strip.
“The Qataris [tinham] a special envoy who came every month, by private jet, to Rafah [no sul da Faixa de Gaza] with a suitcase,” Levy says. “He would enter Gaza, hand the suitcase to Hamas, say goodbye and come back, that’s how it was.”
Levy told BBC Panorama that he believes “a significant amount of that money” went to “support the military arm of Hamas”.
Billions more have been provided by United Nations agencies, the European Union, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and numerous humanitarian agencies. All this money was intended for humanitarian purposes.
Tom Keating believes it is a “reasonable assessment” to think that this money may have subsidized Hamas’ military arm. For him “this is money [o Hamas] You can use it in other projects, such as building tunnels or arming your army.”
It is impossible to know whether and how much donor money has been allocated by Hamas for military purposes.
The group denies having stolen money received in assistance. He told BBC Panorama that his military arm had its own sources of funding.
The Israeli prime minister has already made clear his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state and says his strategic goal is linked to his position on funding Hamas.
In 2019, Netanyahu told his colleagues in the ruling Likud party that “whoever wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state must strengthen support for Hamas and transfer money to Hamas… This is part of our strategy: to isolate the Palestinians to Gaza by the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Keeping Hamas strong enough to be an effective rival against Fatah – the group’s West Bank adversary – would prevent the possibility of a “unified Palestinian leadership with which some sort of final agreement would need to be negotiated,” says Hamas expert Khaled Elgindy . – Israeli think tank Middle East Institute, in Washington DC, USA.
More recently, Netanyahu denied wanting to strengthen Hamas and said he only allowed Qatari money into the Gaza Strip to avoid a humanitarian crisis.
Now Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas. According to him, there will be “no element” in Gaza that finances terrorism.
But, with so much destruction in the Gaza Strip and the deaths of so many Palestinians, Israel could achieve the opposite effect.
“Iran will likely continue to arm and financially support Hamas,” according to Elgindy. “Furthermore, as long as there is a reason for a group like Hamas to try to acquire these weapons, these resources and these capabilities, they will do so.”
“Because the justifications, the reasons for that still persist.”
Source: Terra
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