Not just Iran, here’s who pampers Hamas
There is a long list of countries that transfer money into Hamas' coffers: Qatar, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. First, of course, there is Iran. Conversation with Andrea Molle, associate professor of Political Science and International Relations at Chapman University in Orange
A window of time of at least a year and a half was necessary for Iran to train, through its Revolutionary Guards and the faithful Hezbollah, Hamas in the military tactics used on October 7 to deliver the deadly blow to Israel and kill 1,400 people. If the missiles manufactured in Gaza with Iranian know-how weren't enough, this is the most visible signature of the ayatollahs identified by Andrea Molle , associate professor of Political Science and International Relations at Chapman University in Orange, California, who in this interview with Start Magazine offers an anatomy of Hamas that also passes through the analysis of who and how finances and arms it.
What is Hamas?
The definition provided by the international community is that of a Sunni fundamentalist, paramilitary and terrorist political organization which has as its declared objective that of arriving at a solution to the so-called Palestinian question through the annihilation of the State of Israel and the expulsion of the Jews from the land he claims as exclusively Palestinian land. The movement has a fundamental slogan that we have unfortunately heard resounding in the demonstrations held in recent days in the West and it is "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free".
We are practically reading the statute of Hamas.
Exactly. If we go and look at that document, paper sings, as they say. This is Hamas, which is certainly not a humanitarian organization or a political movement with which some compromise can be reached, as was instead possible with Arafat's and today Abu Mazen's faction, Fatah.
Can Hamas also be defined as a jihadist organization, that is, one that advocates holy war?
Hamas makes direct reference to jihad. Its roots refer in particular to the radical tradition of the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement founded in 1928 by the Egyptian Hassan al-Banna. It must be said that more or less extreme souls coexist within Hamas, even if the organization we saw in action on 7 October, with its very ferocious face, is the result of an evolution that seems to have erased those differences .
How many fighters does Hamas have?
If we talk about the Qassam Brigades, i.e. the military wing of Hamas, there are estimates that assign it a strength of between 30 and 40 thousand men. Obviously the organization as a whole is much larger.
What is Hamas' budget?
Although it is always difficult to make a precise calculation, the US State Department estimated in 2020 that Hamas' budget was in the order of several hundred million dollars. However, this money only partly goes to finance military operations. In fact, I remember that Hamas has been administering the Gaza Strip since 2006 and therefore provides a whole series of services to the population of that territory: money that naturally goes to welfare, and is also used to pay pensions to the families of the martyrs. A not very recent but certainly current study on the Hamas economy highlighted how the organization was extremely skilled at bartering services in exchange for loyalty.
Who is supporting Hamas financially?
There is a long list of capitals that transfer money into Hamas' coffers: from Persian Gulf countries such as Qatar to some North African states such as Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. These are the actors who directly finance Hamas, even if not always openly. Then there are other streams of financing that Hamas captures, funds that are not directly addressed to Hamas but which enter its coffers through a very sophisticated game. This is the case of humanitarian interventions which are then diverted into the group's coffers.
Is EU money also being diverted?
Not just the money, also the materials that the EU provides him. Much of the funding for projects intended to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people is diverted into Hamas coffers. So it happens that those who delude themselves into thinking they are financing humanitarian actions see their money pass to other entities and from these to Hamas in a perverse game of Chinese boxes. There was the sensational case of an aqueduct whose construction was financed by the EU: videos then emerged in which Hamas men boasted of having transformed those pipes into missiles. Paradoxically, Israeli money also ends up in this mechanism.
Who arms Hamas instead?
Iran. We know that that country, over the years, has carried out massive transfers not only of money but also of technology aimed in particular at the construction of a vast arsenal of very advanced rockets. Iran not only does not hide this but openly boasts about it. And so does Hamas: I remember that last year one of its leaders boasted of having received around 70 million dollars in military assistance from Iran. Just to clarify, the over 4,000 rockets that rained down on Israel on October 7 were manufactured in Gaza but with designs that can be traced back to Iran. But Iran's imprint in the attack on Israel can be seen from other factors, for example from the training that Hamas fighters necessarily received to prepare for this blitz, or from the use of gliders and other tactics adopted in the phase attack kinetics.
So the training was also Iranian?
It was not direct training: Iran, with the help of Hezbollah, organized tactical training seminars for officers of the Hamas Qassam brigades in the Lebanese camps managed by technical consultants of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who then they returned to Gaza and trained the operators there. All this over the course of a time window of at least a year and a half to prepare the attack plan.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/iran-hamas-intervista-andrea-molle/ on Wed, 18 Oct 2023 08:29:50 +0000.