Besides the funds it receives from Qatar and Iran, and the revenue it generates from taxing its population, Hamas also operates an extensive network of shell companies and businesses. Sean O’Driscoll explores the terrorist group’s complex financial web:

By examining business records and cross-referencing them with the sanctions lists, Newsweek’s investigation shows how Hamas is using some of its key personnel to set up such companies around the Middle East and elsewhere to run its financial empire—often in places where, one expert said, it may find tacit approval for such operations. They include businesses in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, and may even reveal how the group is expanding into Western Europe.

Newsweek found that one Yemeni business administrator is the joint owner of Hamas’s UAE property company, which owned an office block worth $150 million; is the co-founder of a Hamas-linked, publicly traded Turkish construction company; owns 20 percent of a Hamas front company in Saudi Arabia; and is on the board of another Hamas-linked Sudanese company. Separately, company records show an accountant from the West Bank is central to four major construction and real-estate companies in three countries: Turkey, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia.

The network appears to be growing. A wealthy Sudanese businessman who had close ties to Osama bin Laden, the late al-Qaeda leader, and who is described by the U.S. Treasury Department as a “Hamas financier,” set up a Hamas-linked company in Spain last December, corporate filings show.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.