While we await the attack by Iran and its allies against Israel, a power struggle is underway within Hamas between those who want to take the place of Ismael Haniyeh, who was eliminated by the Israelis last July 31 in Tehran. Initially, Turkey announced through a press release from its Foreign Ministry that Khaled Meshal was Haniyeh’s successor as “interim head of the Hamas politburo”. The fact that Turkey made the announcement shows how the Muslim Brotherhood wants Recep Tayyip Erdogan to lead the supporters of the jihadist movement. Khaled Meshal, born in 1956, a billionaire himself just like Haniyeh and his deputy Musa Abu Marzouk, has been living in exile in Qatar for years and was already the head of the organization until 2017. He is not loved in Tehran because in the past he sided with the rebels against Bashar Assad in Syria. The one who has not digested this announcement is the military head of Hamas, Yaya Sinwar, pro-Iranian, who from his bunker in the Gaza underground has made it known that he does not accept the nomination of Khaled Meshal, because he is closely tied to Qatar and Turkey.
According to Saudi media reports today, Hamas had chosen Mohamed Ismail Darwish, also known as Abu Omar Hassan, as Haniyeh’s successor. He is a little-known figure who has remained out of public view and has served as the head of Hamas’s religious council. As soon as the news broke, a Hamas source said that Mohammed Ismail Darwish will coordinate the group’s leadership in Gaza, the West Bank and abroad until the general elections, but will not be eligible to run, but Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas Politburo, denied that Darwish had been chosen as Ismail Haniyeh’s successor, saying that the results of the elections will be announced once they are completed.
Before the war, Hamas held elections every four years to elect 15 people to the political office and leadership. Haniyeh’s death threw Hamas into chaos and revealed an internal struggle between leader Yahya Sinwar and the high officials who live like nabobs in Qatar. The clash is certainly not over doctrinal issues but over power and money. Lots of money. How much? As the New York Times wrote in 2018, Israeli security officials obtained secret documents that revealed details of a private equity fund used by Hamas to finance its operations. These documents, stolen from the computer of a high-ranking Hamas official, listed assets worth billions of dollars, including mining companies, chicken farms and road construction in Sudan, two skyscrapers in the United Arab Emirates, a real estate developer in Algeria and a real estate company listed on the Turkish stock exchange and hundreds of bank accounts. To all this must be added all the million-dollar donations that arrive from all over the world in the Gaza Strip on which Hamas does its “skimming”. So we are talking about enormous amounts of money that the leaders and petty bosses of Hamas want to get their hands on because the higher you climb in the vertical of power, the more you can steal with both hands. Three examples above all: Meshal has an estimated wealth of four billion dollars, Musa Abu Marzouk of about three billion while the late Haniyeh had stashed away a booty of five billion dollars. Haniyeh’s sons are famous for their crazy spending in jewelry stores in the Persian Gulf where they buy gifts for the occasional “girlfriends”.
Hamas is thus the richest terrorist organization in the world while the Palestinians who are used as human shields, have been starving for decades while their leaders carouse with Eastern prostitutes in five-star hotels in Doha (Qatar). The documents, reviewed by the New York Times, could have been used to block Hamas funding and thwart its plans. However, despite being shared with the Israeli and Washington governments, for years none of the companies cited in the records faced sanctions from the United States or Israel, nor were they publicly denounced or pressured Turkey, the center of the financial network, to close it and there are enormous responsibilities here that will need to be clarified at every level. But how much is Hamas worth today in financial terms? We asked Costantino Pistilli, analyst and essayist: “The cumulative net worth of the top Hamas leaders abroad was estimated at $11 billion. The U.S. Treasury Department in 2023 sanctioned a network of financial facilitators who managed a complex global investment portfolio for Hamas, with assets estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars. The Palestinian terrorist organization uses a global financial network to channel support from charities and friendly nations – such as Qatar, Iran, Turkey – by smuggling cash through tunnels in Gaza or using cryptocurrencies to circumvent international sanctions.
As we write, a new twist has arrived; Hamas has announced that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip, will replace Ismail Haniyeh. as the leader of the organization’s political bureau after Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran last week. Shortly after the announcement, red alert sirens were activated in many locations in southern Israel. Yaya Sinwar, the director of the October 7, 2023 attacks and the man of the Iranians, has all the power within Hamas. This is a weak choice, although very symbolic and with a strong impact. Yahya Sinwar has been hiding for ten months in the tunnels under Gaza and from there he will hardly be able to stop those who want to get their hands on the terrorist organization’s treasure. The war within Hamas has just begun.
