Shortly after the start of Hamas’s brutal attack against Israel on October 7, a video began circulating of the terror group’s leader Ismail Haniyeh in his elegant office in the Qatari capital Doha, watching the bloody onslaught unfold on Al Jazeera and “prostrating in gratitude” with a group of other Hamas officials for the killing of over 1,300 Israelis, among them at least 1,000 civilians.
For years, Haniyeh has been rebuked by many Palestinians for leading a comfortable life away from the hardships of Gaza in the oil-rich Gulf monarchy, which offers shelter to the terror group’s leaders and an internationally recognized platform to spread its propaganda through Al Jazeera.
Before Hamas’s win in the Palestinian elections against Fatah in 2006, Haniyeh was not a prominent member of the terror group’s leadership. After the electoral victory, his star began to rise.
He was appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, and his wealth rapidly grew thanks to the control that he and other ministers in the Hamas government exerted over the Gazan economy and the taxes they levied on goods imported into the Strip from Egypt.
Senior Hamas figures, including Haniyeh, would levy a 20 percent tax on all of the trade passing through the tunnels, according to a 2014 report in Ynet, an Israeli news site. READ MORE