Israel Must Cut Off Hamas’s Access to Cash

President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have made clear that they wish America to aid in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, and the amelioration of its overall material situation, while making sure that these funds don’t go to Hamas. But it is not at all clear how this can be done, given the terrorist group’s tight control over the territory and the willingness of such institutions as UNRWA—the UN organization that provides aid to Palestinians—to cooperate with it. Israel, for its part, has long allowed Qatar to support Hamas with large cash payments. But Nitsana Darshan-Leitner suggests an alternative:

The truth is simple: money transferred to the Gaza Strip cannot be monitored. Not by international organizations whose functionaries answer to Hamas, not by charities—as their infrastructure is an integral part of Hamas and the public sympathy for it—and certainly not by the Palestinian Authority, which has no power over the Strip whatsoever. . . . [A]ny cash that goes into Gaza finds its way to Hamas’s military goals.

Israel must now inform Qatar and European countries that if they want to support the impoverished Palestinians in Gaza, they are more than welcome to send as many containers of food, medicine, clothing, toys, textbooks, furniture, etc. as they want. Want to pay for fuel and electricity? Excellent. But keep the cash. Dollars only buy ammunition and Israel will no longer allow it into Gaza.

A terrorist group cannot pay operatives without banks, communicate without technological means, or operate in general without lawyers and accountants. . . . The thousands of rockets [Hamas] has developed, the missiles it purchased, the underground city it dug [for conducting military operations], the stipends paid to terrorists and their families—all cost more than a billion dollars.

To this end, Darshan-Leitner concludes, Israel must follow up its military offensive against the terrorist group with a financial one—otherwise it is merely allowing Hamas to build back what the IDF just destroyed.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Antony Blinken, Hamas, Israeli Security, Joe Biden

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF