The Gaza Strip may not be quite so squalid and impoverished as one would guess from its portrayal in the media, yet there is no doubt that the territory is quite poor. Nonetheless, its rulers live in luxury, often with fortunes totaling millions or billions of dollars. Deborah Danan explains:

According to Moshe Elad, a Middle East expert from the Western Galilee Academic College, most of the founders of Hamas were refugees or direct descendants of refugees. . . . The money, Elad told the Israeli financial newspaper Globes, came from several directions. “Donations by the families of people who died, charity money, called zakala in Arabic, and donations from various countries. [These donations first came from the governments of] Syria and Saudi Arabia; then Iran, one of the main sponsors; and ended with Qatar, which has today taken Iran’s place.”

There were also campaigns to raise money in the U.S. “Mousa Abu Marzook,” [currently the group’s deputy chairman], Elad says, “started raising funds among the rich Muslims in America and also established several bank funds.” Over time he built a conglomerate of ten financial operations “that give loans and conduct investments. He’s an amazing financier.”

Today, Abu Marzook is one of the major billionaires in Hamas. “Arab estimates peg his fortune at 2 to 3 billion dollars,” Elad says. Another senior-official-turned-terror-tycoon is Khaled Mashal, head of Hamas’s political wing. “Global estimates say Mashal is worth $2.6 billion,” but Arab commentators, with other sources, say he is worth between 2 and 5 billion, “invested in Egyptian banks and Gulf countries, some in real-estate projects.” Next on the list is Ismail Haniyeh, [the organization’s current chairman].

Most of their money comes from misused donations to the Gaza Strip, since every dollar passes through Hamas’s pipeline. Elad assesses that smuggling of goods through tunnels generates hundreds of millions a year and those who control the siphon became wealthy along the way. There are several hundred millionaires in Gaza and there would be hundreds more if smuggling would continue unabated.

Hamas also apparently published fictitious names of employees to sponsors abroad and then scooped up their salaries and distributed them among a few senior members.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”