In the early 2000s the largest backer of Hamas was Saudi Arabia, with over 50% of its funds coming from that country, mainly through Islamic charity organizations. An earlier estimate by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated a $50 million annual budget, mostly supplied by private charitable associations but with $12 million supplied directly by Gulf states, primarily Saudi Arabia, and a further $3 million from Iran. In 2002, a Saudi Arabian charity, the Saudi Council to Support the Palestinian Intefada run by the Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz stated the council will give the families of 102 Hamas militants killed, including eight suicide bombers, $5,340 each.
Saudi owned al-Taqwa Bank has been identified of holding money for Hamas as early as 1997. Jamie C. Zarate, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department, told Congress that 60 million was moved to Hamas accounts with al-Taqwa bank. The Al Taqwa bank has also been used to launder funds for Al Qaeda. The funding by Saudi Arabia continued despite Saudi pledges to stop funding groups such as Hamas that have used violence,and its recent denouncements of Hamas' lack of unity with Fatah. According to the US State Department, Hamas is funded by Iran, Palestinian expatriates, and "private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states." Saudi spokesman Adel Al Jubeir said that “no Saudi government money goes to Hamas, directly or indirectly.” He added that it “very likely” that “some Saudi individuals” have provided financial support to Hamas.
In 2004, reports citing unidentified U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials indicated that Saudi funding for Hamas had been curtailed and replaced by other regional sponsors. In June 2004 testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, former Treasury Department General Counsel David Aufhauser quoted “informed intelligence sources” as saying that “for whatever reason, the money going to Hamas from Saudi Arabia has substantially dried up.” Aufhauser indicated that Saudi financial support “has been supplemented by money from Iran and Syria flowing through even more dangerous rejectionist groups in the West Bank.” Similarly, Israeli daily Maariv quoted in 2004 an unidentified Israeli military official as saying that “for the first time in years the Saudis have begun to reduce the flow of funds to Hamas and to the Gaza Strip.” This source attributes this change largely to U.S. pressure on Saudi Arabia to stem the flow of funding to Hamas and other terrorist organizations.According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), another reported funding source for Hamas is through the 21,000 Arabs of Palestinian and Lebanese descent who live in the Foz do Iguaçu area of the tri-border region of Latin America. According to Paraguayan Interior Minister Julio César Fanego, they have donated "something between $50 and $500 million" to 16 Arab extremist groups between 1999 and 2001, in amounts ranging from $500 to $2,000.
In the late 1980s, 10% of all Hamas funding came Islamic Republic of Iran. Later, from 1993 to 2006, Iran provided Hamas with approximately $30 US million annually. More recent assessments indicate that Iranian funding has increased significantly between 2006–2009, to hundreds of millions of Euros per year. After 2009, sanctions on Iran made funding difficult, forcing Hamas instead to rely on religious donations by individuals in the West Bank, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Since June 2011 funding from the Islamic Republic of Iran has been cut to show "displeasure at Hamas's failure to hold public rallies in support of President Assad" in the face of the Syrian uprising, and funding from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has been cut so the MB can diverts funds "to support Arab Spring revolts".The shortages have meant that Gaza's 40,000 civil service and security employees were not paid July 2011.
Hamas-linked charities in 2010 invested heavily in Gaza business ventures, with the condition that much of revenue stream from those ventures go to Hamas-linked charitable purposes in Gaza. Generally, Hamas and its members have increasingly dominated the Gaza economy, in particular since the 2006 Israel-led blockade of Gaza and Gaza elections.
Gaza domestic funding
Hamas approved a 540 million dollar government budget for 2010 with up to 90% coming from "undisclosed" foreign aid which includes funding from Iran and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood according to western intelligence agencies. Due to the Gaza blockade, Hamas still faces a financial crisis. With a bureaucracy of around 30,000 staff, the organisation is growing faster than can be handled with salaries being delayed or prioritised for the lowest paid. To fund it's budget, Hamas has raised new taxes on businesses and imposed a 14.5% tax on luxury goods smuggled through the tunnels. Gaza businessmen have accused Hamas of profiting from the blockade and using these taxes to buy large tracts of land and private buildings for public facilities in competition to established businesses.
In August 2011, the U.S State Department threatened to cut a 100 million dollars in aid it sends to the Gaza Strip if Hamas continues to insist upon auditing American foreign aid organizations after Hamas suspended operations of the International Medical Corps following the group's refusal to submit to an onsite audit. Most foreign charities submit their own audits to the Interior Ministry in Ramallah. Charities must be audited by law, possibly to ensure money is not diverted for political or intelligence-gathering purposes but as the U.S. government forbids direct contact with Hamas the action prompted Washington to issue the threat via a third party. Aid provided by American and other foreign groups goes to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, where most of the 1.6 million residents are refugees
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A US official based in the region said "USAID-funded partner organizations operating in Gaza are forced by Hamas's actions to suspend their assistance work. (They) were put on hold effective August 12." According to the official, Hamas demanded access to files and records of NGOs, which would reveal financial and administrative information, details of staff members and information on beneficiaries. He said Hamas shut down IMC and USAID after the US objected to "unwarranted audits". Hamas administration official Taher al-Nono said Hamas had a right to monitor their work in the territory but an understanding had been reached that would allow independent auditing teams to inspect the files of NGOs.
A day after the US announced it was suspending financial aid to Gaza, Hamas officials said they had reached an agreement with the United States that would allow USAID to continue operations.
In August 2011, the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip imposed new travel restrictions on Palestinians active in non-governmental organizations by requiring them to provide details of the trip to the ministry in what the Palestinian NGO Network regards as another Hamas attempt to control and hamper them. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights condemned the new laws. Tharut al Bic, head of the interior ministry’s NGO department, stated that “the new instructions are intended to make it easier for travellers to better organize their trip and to preserve order”. Hamas requires sick people wishing to leave the Gaza Strip to submit applications and meet various conditions, in addition to restrictions Israel imposes on Palestinians leaving Gaza.
Media
In 2005, Hamas announced its intention to launch an experimental TV channel, "Al-Aqsa TV". The station was launched on January 7, 2006, less than three weeks before the Palestinian legislative elections. It has shown television programs, including some children's television, which deliver anti-semitic messages. Hamas has stated that the television station is "an independent media institution that often does not express the views of the Palestinian government headed by Ismail Haniyeh or of the Hamas movement," and that Hamas does not hold anti-semitic views.
Islamization efforts
Islamization of the Gaza Strip
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From 1987 to 1991, during the first intifada, Hamas campaigned for the wearing of the hijab alongside other measures, including insisting women stay at home be segregated from men, and the promotion of polygamy. In the course of this campaign women who chose not to wear the hijab were verbally and physically harassed, with the result that the hijab was being worn 'just to avoid problems on the streets'.
Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, some of its members have attempted to impose Islamic dress or the Hijab head covering on women.Also, the government’s "Islamic Endowment Ministry" has deployed Virtue Committee members to warn citizens of the dangers of immodest dress, card playing and dating. However, there are no government laws imposing dress and other moral standards, and the Hamas education ministry reversed one effort to impose Islamic dress on students. There has also been successful resistance to attempts by local Hamas officials to impose Islamic dress on women.
Hamas officials deny having any plans to impose Islamic law, one legislator stating that “What you are seeing are incidents, not policy,” and that Islamic law is the desired standard "but we believe in persuasion.” The Hamas education ministry reversed one effort to impose Islamic dress on students. In March 2010, the BBC interviewed five "middle-class" women in Gaza City in March 2010, and all indicated there had been little or no change toward more conservative dress and mores.
In the West Bank
In 2005, the human rights organization Freemuse released a report titled "Palestine: Taliban-like attempts to censor music", which said that Palestinian musicians feared that harsh religious laws against music and concerts will be imposed since Hamas group scored political gains in the Palestinian Authority local elections of 2005.
The attempt by Hamas to dictate a cultural code of conduct in the 1980s and early 1990s led to a violent fighting between different Palestinan sectors. Hamas members reportedly burned down stores that stocked videos which they deemed indecent and destroyed books which they described as "heretical."
In 2005, an outdoor music and dance performance in Qalqiliya were suddenly banned by the Hamas led municipality, for the reason that such an event would be forbidden by Islam, or "Haram". The municipality also ordered that music no longer be played in the Qalqiliya zoo, and mufti Akrameh Sabri issued a religious edict affirming the municipality decision. In response, the Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish warned that "There are Taliban-type elements in our society, and this is a very dangerous sign".
The Palestinian columnist Mohammed Abd Al-Hamid, a resident of Ramallah, wrote that this religious coercion could cause the migration of artists, and said "The religious fanatics in Algeria destroyed every cultural symbol, shattered statues and rare works of art and liquidated intellectuals and artists, reporters and authors, ballet dancers and singers – are we going to imitate the Algerian and Afghani examples?"
Tayyip Erdoğan's Turkey as a Role Model
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Some Hamas members stated that the model of Islamic government that Hamas seeks to emulate is that of Turkey under the rule of Tayyip Erdoğan. The foremost members to distance Hamas from the practices of Taliban and to publicly support the Erdoğan model were Ahmad Yousef and Ghazi Hamad, advisers to Prime Minister Hanieh. Yusuf, the Hamas deputy foreign minister, reflected this goal in an interview to a Turkish newspaper, stating that while foreign public opinion equates Hamas with the Taliban or al-Qaeda, the analogy is inaccurate. Yusuf described the Taliban as “opposed to everything,” including education and women’s rights, while Hamas wants to establish good relations between the religious and secular elements of society and strives for human rights, democracy and an open society. According to professor Yezid Sayigh of the King's College in London, how influential this view is within Hamas is uncertain, since both Ahmad Yousef and Ghazi Hamad were dismissed from their posts as advisers to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Hanieh in October 2007. Both have since been appointed to other prominent positions within the Hamas government. Khaled al-Hroub of the West Bank-based and anti-Hamas Palestinian daily Al Ayyam added that despite claims by Hamas leaders that it wants to repeat the Turkish model of Islam, "what is happening on the ground in reality is a replica of the Taliban model of Islam".
Antisemitism and anti-Zionism
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See also: Racism in the Palestinian territories
According to academic Esther Webman, antisemitism is not the main tenet of Hamas ideology, although antisemitic rhetoric is frequent and intense in Hamas leaflets. The leaflets generally do not differentiate between Jews and Zionists. In other Hamas publications and in interviews with its leaders attempts at this differentiation have been made. In 2009 representatives of the small Jewish sect Neturei Karta met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in Gaza, who stated that he held nothing against Jews but only against the state of Israel.
Hamas Charter (1988)
Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant provides the following quotation, attributed to Mohammed:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
Article 22 states that the French revolution, the Russian revolution, colonialism and both world wars were created by the Zionists or forces supportive of Zionism:
"You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it."
Article 32 of the Covenant refers to an antisemitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:
"Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."
Statements by Hamas members and clerics
In 2008 Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas said in his sermon at the Katib Wilayat mosque in Gaza that "Jews are a people who cannot be trusted. They have been traitors to all agreements. Go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing.". In an interview on the same year, Hamas Culture Minister Atallah Abu Al-Subh stated that " The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the faith that every Jew harbors in his heart".
Another Hamas legislator and imam, Sheik Yunus al-Astal, discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that "suffering by fire is the Jews' destiny in this world and the next". He concluded "Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews".
According to MEMRI, in September 1996 the Hamas monthly Falastin Al-Muslima had published a series of articles by Shaykh Ibrahim Al-'Ali, on how Allah punished the Jews of Iliya, transforming them into animals, a punishment that left a mark on Jews - "their opinions, their feelings, and their ways of thought – which are reflected in face and external appearance – became like their nature and like the appearance of apes and pigs". Al-'Ali explained that the Jews later invented the theory of evolution, to prove that the entire human race was descended from apes, to cover their own shame of being "the brothers of apes and pigs". Sunni tradition also holds that Shi'ites suffered the same fate "because the Jews invented the Shi'a (Shia religion)...and is pervaded by the Jews'beliefs."
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