Israel Moves to Seize Hamas Funds in Europe

A Hamas rally in Gaza (AFP)
A Hamas rally in Gaza (AFP)
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Israel Moves to Seize Hamas Funds in Europe

A Hamas rally in Gaza (AFP)
A Hamas rally in Gaza (AFP)

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has signed administrative memorandums allowing the confiscation of funds paid to five senior Hamas officials working in Europe, amounting to more than $1 million, according to Israel Hayom newspaper.

The new step is part of an ongoing campaign by the security establishment in Israel, in partnership with the General Security Service and the Israeli Bureau for Combating Terrorist Financing, aiming to thwart the Hamas movement's organizational infrastructure and financial resources within the European Union (EU).

The memorandums claimed that these senior officials worked within the framework of a foreign branch of Hamas, led by Khaled Meshaal, to raise funds and gain public support.

Israel says hundreds of thousands of dollars were transferred to these people to promote Hamas' activities within the EU.

Israeli media reported that Hamas activists reside in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Italy.

In the past few years, the Israeli security services have increased monitoring of the routes and transfers of Hamas funds, including money transferred to the movement in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and abroad.

The army intelligence monitored Palestinian money exchangers in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip and thwarted hundreds of money transfers.

Israel closed accounts, seized assets in West Bank banks, killed a money exchanger in Gaza, closed institutions, and began following up the movement's money transfers from abroad.

About a week ago, investigators in the Netherlands arrested a man and his daughter on charges of sending $5.4 million to Hamas in violation of EU sanctions, according to the public prosecution office.

The man, 55, and his old daughter, 22, from Leidschendam near The Hague, were arrested on June 22 on suspicion of providing extensive financing to Hamas.

Investigators found the money during house searches in Leidschendam, a business in Rotterdam, and a bank account of about 750,000 euros.

The public prosecution office said the pair are suspected of sending about 5.5 million euros ($6 million) to bodies "related to the organization Hamas, which was sanctioned in 2003."

The father and daughter "are also suspected of participating in a criminal organization whose purpose is to support Hamas financially," the prosecution statement said. They remain in custody. Their names were not released, in line with Dutch privacy regulations.

The European Union blacklisted Hamas after the September 11, 2001 attacks that targeted New York and Washington.

Israel works closely with the US and Europe to prosecute the movement's funding sources.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".