Who provides FUND & Support to Hamas?

Qatar is the most important financial backer and ally of Hamas. So far, the emirate has transferred $1.8 billion to Hamas. Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin-Khalifa al-Thani was the first state leader to visit Hamas government in 2012.

A $15 million Qatari cash infusion has been paid out to impoverished Palestinian civil servants in the Gaza Strip every month since 2018. However, it cannot be verified that the funds were utilized for this purpose.

Qatar’s official news agency said the donated money would benefit 27,000 civil servants out of over 40,000 public servants hired by Hamas since 2007. The rest would be paid through local revenues, it said.

State-sponsored terrorism is a trademark policy of Qatar. Several Muslim nations had cut diplomatic ties with it in 2017 and imposed a trade blockade. However, this was lifted earlier this year.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s foreign minister, recently met Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in the capital, Doha.

The foreign ministry said Sheikh Mohammed stressed the need for the international community to act urgently to stop the repeated brutal Israeli attacks against civilians in Gaza.

Israel had previously agreed to the gas-rich Gulf Arab state donating materials for civilian construction projects or fuel, worried that more fungible cash donations could reach Hamas, against which it has fought three wars in a decade.

Branded as a terrorist group in the West, Hamas has been under years of embargo by Israel and neighboring Egypt. Hamas leaders said in the past they had received funds from other countries including Iran and Turkey.

Erdogan, a vocal defender of the Palestinians, has criticized Israel for conducting airstrikes on Gaza and called it a “terror state” after Israeli police fired rubber bullets at rock-throwing Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Last year, he hosted the military chief of Hamas, who has a $5 million dollar bounty on his head by Turkish ally NATO.

Iran has been paying $70 million per year, this is equivalent to $6 million per month.

A vast majority of the funding received by Hamas is humanitarian aid intended for the people of Gaza. However, it rarely reaches them.

Hamas’s political rival based in the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has previously slashed Gaza budgets.

Hamas spends 55 per cent of its budget on the military and merely 5 per cent is allocated for rehabilitating its people.

It collects $27 million dollars in taxes but most of it is used to pay their fighters and workers.

Hamas prides itself as a militant group. It smuggles Iranian rockets through Egypt and Sudan.

It sources the materials and technology from Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hamas has around 10,000 rockets in their arsenal. They are mostly short-range missiles worth $800 apiece.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system intercepts rockets fired by Hamas, each launch costing reportedly almost $50,000.

The Israeli government has installed the system in cities as a ground-based installation used to shoot down short-range missiles. Reports say each battery of the dome costs approximately $100 million, with missiles costing $50,000.

The current exchange of fire has been the most intensive between Israel and Hamas since a 2014 war in Gaza, and has prompted international concern that the situation could spiral out of control.

Gaza has a population of approximately two million and the poverty rate is 56 per cent. 50 per cent of the its population is unemployed.

It lacks basic infrastructure such as schools and has only 11 big hospitals for the entire population.

Almost 85 per cent of all schools in Gaza run double shifts and work without electricity.

Gaza is the perfect example of a poor land with rich rulers. Hamas is the third richest terror group in the world.

Saving the people of Gaza is not beyond Hamas. But that would mean shelving their military ambitions.

A victory against Israel is not in the hands of Hamas. But giving their people a better life is.

As of now a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip has come into effect. The ceasefire began early on Friday, bringing to an end 11 days of fighting in which more than 250 people were killed, most of them in Gaza. Both Israel and Hamas claimed victory in the conflict.

Both Israel and Hamas claimed victory in the conflict.

The truce faced an early test on Friday when fresh clashes broke out at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP news agency that Palestinians had thrown stones at officers, and that “riot” suppressing measures had been taken in response.

The fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza began on 10 May after weeks of rising Israeli-Palestinian tension in East Jerusalem that culminated in clashes at al-Aqsa, a holy site revered by both Muslims and Jews. Hamas began firing rockets after warning Israel to withdraw from the site, triggering retaliatory air strikes.

At least 243 people, including more than 100 women and children, were killed in Gaza, according to its health ministry. Israel has said it killed at least 225 militants during the fighting. Hamas has not given casualty figures for fighters.

In Israel 12 people, including two children, were killed, its medical service says. The Israeli military says more than 4,300 rockets were fired towards its territory by militants and that it struck more than 1,000 militant targets in Gaza.

What have the two sides said about the truce?

The Israeli Political Security Cabinet said on Thursday night it had “unanimously accepted the recommendation” for a ceasefire.

“The political leaders emphasized that the reality on the ground will determine the future of the campaign,” it said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced criticism from some in Israel who said he had halted the conflict too soon. The mayors of Sderot and Ashkelon – two of the Israeli towns hardest hit by rockets from Gaza – were among those to voice their disappointment, saying Hamas should have been eliminated.

At a news conference today, the prime minister said Israel had “exacted a heavy price from Hamas”.

“Not everything is known to the public yet, nor to Hamas, but the full range of achievements will be revealed over time,” he said.

A Hamas official told the Associated Press news agency the ceasefire announced by Israel amounted to a “victory” for the Palestinian people.

This view was shared by people celebrating on the streets of Gaza. “This is the day of victory, the day of freedom, and it is the most beautiful day that we’ve experienced,” one said.

Basem Naim, from the Hamas Council on International Relations, told the BBC he was sceptical about whether the truce would last “without justice for Palestinians, without stopping the Israeli aggression and Israeli atrocities”.

A member of Hamas’s political bureau, Izzat al-Reshiq, issued a warning to Israel.

“It’s true that the battle ends today but Netanyahu and the whole world should know that our finger is on the trigger and we will continue to ramp up the capabilities of this resistance,” he told Reuters.

President Joe Biden said the ceasefire had brought a “genuine opportunity” for progress, and commended Mr Netanyahu in a phone call after the agreement was announced.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

TWO STATE SOLUTION: Israel must accept that there exists two states. Palestine and Israel. Each party has to understand the legitimacy of the other’s narrative.

The main reason for this was the BALFOUR DECLARATION by the British in 1917. This is deemed to be the root of the entire conflict.

Just see the shrewd game of the British ( Same as the Divide & Rule implemented in India by the British and diving India to India and Pakistan on religion basis) . They entered into three agreement on the same piece of land, Palestine with three different parties and three different contradictory promises. Obviously, they could not fulfil all, yet they promised.

The British government remains unrepentant after all these years. It has yet to take any measure of moral responsibility, however symbolic, for what it has done to the Palestinians. Ironically, members of the British parliament have declared that the use of the term “Zionist” is both anti-Semitic and abusive. But the truth is, not only was Rothschild a Zionist, Balfour was, too. Zionism, then, before it deservedly became a swear word, was a political notion that Europeans prided themselves to be associated with.

In fact, just before he became Prime Minister, David Cameron declared, before the Conservative Friends of Israel meeting, that he, too, was a Zionist. His successor, Theresa May, even celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration, ‘with pride’.

To some extent, being a Zionist remains a rite of passage for some Western leaders. One hundred years later, the British government is yet to possess the moral courage to take responsibility for what their government has done to the Palestinian people.

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Nishanth Muraleedharan, also known as "Nishani," is an IT engineer who transitioned into entrepreneurship, driven by a profound passion for the textile industry. As the president of Save Handloom Foundation, (SaveHandloom.org) and the Founder & CEO of DMZ International Imports & Exports Pvt Ltd., I am passionate about reviving the Indian handloom industry and empowering the weavers and artisans across the country. With 25+ years of experience in the textile industry, I have developed deep market insights and a rich network of handloom weaving societies, master weavers, and self-help groups, who exclusively make products for our trust.