OPINION:
With all eyes in the Middle East on Iran and Lebanon, Hamas has used its ceasefire with Israel to replenish its funds.
Since October 2025, the terrorist group has amassed the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it digital and brought in via apps. That’s in addition to the cash — estimated to be $134 million to $335 million, according to Ynet — it managed to hide in its terrorist tunnel network after its war against Israel.
Much of the tunnel money came from the Bank of Palestine in Gaza City, which Hamas looted multiple times in 2024, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. How is it making all this cash now? It is not selling falafel.
Hamas has ramped up its illicit taxation and commission-charging scheme. It has been levying steep fines, 15% to 25% per vehicle, on the humanitarian aid brought into the strip each week.
With some 4,200 aid trucks entering the area every week, that’s a lot of ill-gotten tax income.
“Seventy percent of [the aid coming in] belongs to the private sector, which Hamas taxes twice — 15[%] to 25% — on every truck carrying food, fuel, or medicine, and an additional tax on the goods when they are sold in the market,” Israel Defense Forces sources said, according to Israel National News. “Hamas is making tens of millions of shekels a day, and the coffers keep growing.”
Private sector aid has increased sharply in recent months, by about 20% to 30%. The fee Hamas charges each truck depends on the contents.
“Food, for example, is taxed at a lower rate than cigarettes,” according to independent news organization Shomrim, which conducted an investigation into the activity. “The average payment for a single truck can be as high as [$15,000]. This means that Hamas is pocketing more than [$17 million] every week — some [$68 million] since the ceasefire began.”
Taxation at the expense of its own people is nothing new for Hamas. For more than a decade, it has levied a “solidarity tax” — supposedly to help cover the cost of public sector workers’ wages — on goods, food and services.
Now it’s also taxing currency exchanges, selling humanitarian aid items, diverting and selling fuel meant for essential services and extorting importers to the Gaza Strip. Some reports say Hamas is smuggling goods on the aid trucks themselves.
This is no mere matter of corruption. The world knows full well what Hamas and its murderous ilk do with money, and the jihadis are making more money now than they have in a while.
“In the past, Hamas controlled about 20% of Gaza’s economy,” economist Eyal Offer told Shomrim. “Now it could control just 5% and still turn a profit.”
The terrorist group is reportedly rebuilding its tunnel network, which it built with stolen funds in the first place, and rebuilding its military forces.
Throwing a wrench into these evil plans can be done in a straightforward way: by slashing the number of aid trucks going into Gaza. It’s something IDF officials have urged the government to do for months.
“The population in Gaza can survive with much less,” Israeli military sources have said, according to Ynet. A populace of just over 2 million does not require the indefinite daily supply of 600 truckloads of food and aid. No one is that obese, sick or lacking in necessities.
If Israel doesn’t drastically reduce the number of supply trucks going into Gaza — and soon — then the Trump administration should get involved and pressure it to do so. Hamas can be stockpiling for only one thing: more war.
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