Humanitarian Aid to Gaza: Documented Diversion and What It Funds

Since the Palestinian Authority lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, the international community has poured tens of billions of dollars into Gaza in humanitarian aid. UNRWA alone operates on a budget of approximately $1.3 billion per year. The EU, United States, Qatar, and dozens of other donors have contributed additional billions. Gaza's civilian population has remained in poverty throughout — not because aid was insufficient, but because of who controls its distribution.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is the largest single conduit for humanitarian aid to Gaza, with an annual budget of approximately $1.3 billion — funded primarily by the United States ($291 million/year before the 2024 suspension), the EU (€110 million/year), Germany, and other Western donors.

In January 2024, following Israel's provision of intelligence dossiers to the UN and donor governments, Israel alleged that 12 UNRWA employees took part in the October 7, 2023 attack; UNRWA fired the accused staff pending investigation. A UN Office of Internal Oversight Services investigation (August 2024) of 19 staff found evidence that 9 "may have been involved" (they were dismissed), insufficient evidence in 9 cases, and no evidence in 1. More than a dozen donor countries, including the United States, paused funding.

The UNRWA compromise is structural, not incidental:

• UNRWA employs approximately 13,000 people in Gaza, making it one of the territory's largest employers. Israel alleges Hamas deliberately placed members on UNRWA's payroll; the independent Colonna review (April 2024) found UNRWA had "robust" neutrality procedures with gaps in implementation, and said Israel had not yet provided evidence for its claim that a significant number of staff were members of terrorist organizations. Israel assessed that approximately 10% of UNRWA's Gaza staff have verifiable ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
• In February 2024, IDF forces found a tunnel entrance and shaft running directly beneath UNRWA's headquarters in Gaza City. Hamas had constructed its tunnel network using UNRWA facilities as cover.
• UNRWA schools have been used to store weapons. The IDF documented rocket launchers, weapons caches, and military equipment inside UNRWA-operated schools on multiple occasions during 2023–24 operations. UNRWA acknowledged several of these incidents.
• On October 16, 2023, UNRWA posted that people claiming to be from the Hamas-run health ministry had removed fuel and medical equipment from its evacuated Gaza City compound; UNRWA then deleted the post without explanation and later said no looting had occurred at its warehouses.

Hamas has developed multiple mechanisms for extracting value from international aid flows:

Confiscation at distribution points: Hamas forces physically seize food, medicine, and fuel from aid convoys and distribution centers before they reach civilians. Aid convoys have repeatedly been looted. Israel has released drone footage it says shows Hamas operatives seizing aid and beating civilians (December 2023, July 2024, July 2025); UN agencies have more often described the looters as armed gangs and desperate crowds. Who took how much is disputed.

Taxation and "passage fees": Israel and some reports say Hamas charges aid organizations and commercial importers fees for the right to operate in Gaza. These fees — ranging from formal taxes to informal payments to Hamas-affiliated middlemen — extract a percentage of every aid shipment before it reaches its stated recipients.

Black market resale: Confiscated goods — fuel, flour, medicine — are resold in Hamas-controlled markets at prices that extract the aid's commercial value while denying it to those it was intended for.

Cement and construction materials diverted to tunnels: Between 2007 and 2023, Hamas reportedly diverted large quantities of cement and large quantities of steel and aggregate — donated or imported for civilian reconstruction — to build its tunnel network beneath Gaza. The tunnel network reportedly stretches more than 500 kilometers — comparable in scale to the London Underground — and required resources that could only have been accumulated over years by systematically redirecting materials intended for civilian housing.

Since 2012, Qatar has given an estimated $1.8 billion to Gaza (per the Wall Street Journal, as reported by Bloomberg) — for Hamas-run civil-service salaries, fuel, and cash payments to poor families, among other uses. From November 2018, cash was carried into Gaza in suitcases with Israeli approval, initially in installments of $15 million per month.

Israel permitted and even facilitated these transfers for years, operating under the theory that buying Hamas operational stability was preferable to escalation. This policy was debated internally in Israel and widely criticized in Israel after October 7; critics argue the cash freed Hamas resources for its military buildup, though how much of the Qatari money funded military activity has not been publicly documented.

The transfers were officially framed as humanitarian — payment of civil servant salaries, funding for fuel and goods — but Hamas controls Gaza's entire public sector. The distinction between "civil servant salaries" and "Hamas operational budget" is not meaningful when Hamas is the government, the police, the military, and the employer.

While Gaza's civilian population lived under the conditions Hamas created and maintained, Hamas's senior leadership accumulated personal wealth at a scale incompatible with any legitimate interpretation of managing a humanitarian crisis.

Arab and Western media have reported estimates of Hamas leaders' personal net worth — figures that are widely repeated but have never been documented with financial records:

• Khaled Meshaal (former political bureau chief): estimated personal wealth of $2–4 billion
• Ismail Haniyeh (political bureau chief until his assassination in Tehran, July 2024): estimated $4 billion
• Mousa Abu Marzook (deputy political bureau chief): estimated $3 billion

These figures are drawn primarily from Arab financial journalism and should be understood as estimates, not audited figures. What is not in dispute: Hamas's senior leadership lived in luxury in Doha, Qatar — not in Gaza — throughout the period they were managing "resistance" and receiving international humanitarian funds.

The United States government estimates that Iran provides approximately $100 million per year to Hamas's military wing — separate from the international humanitarian aid flows above. This funding supports weapons procurement, training, and the salaries of Hamas's military operatives.

Iran's funding is not humanitarian. It is explicitly military. But it operates in the same ecosystem: all resources in Hamas-controlled territory — civilian and military — are allocated by the same organization. When Iran funds Hamas's military budget, it frees up Hamas's other revenue (including diverted aid) for additional military purposes.

Claims of famine in Gaza circulated widely during 2024. The evidence for actual food shortage — as distinct from Hamas-controlled distribution — is more complicated than the headlines suggested.

Israel documented thousands of truckloads of food and humanitarian supplies entering Gaza during active combat operations in 2024. COGAT published daily entry figures; UN data confirmed significant volumes crossing.

What happened to that food after it crossed the border was a different question. Multiple reports documented Hamas confiscating food at distribution points and functioning markets selling goods in Hamas-controlled areas while civilians in other areas went without. The IPC's famine assessments relied on surveys conducted under wartime conditions and were contested by Israel and some analysts; see The Gaza Famine Narrative for the full dispute.

Critics argue the pattern is consistent with Hamas strategy documented across decades: manufacturing and prolonging civilian suffering to generate international pressure on Israel, while maintaining operational capacity from diverted resources.

Gaza has received more international aid per capita than almost any territory in the world over the past two decades. If that aid had reached its stated recipients, Gaza's civilian population would be substantially better housed, fed, educated, and medically served than it is.

Several factors explain the gap between aid delivered and aid received, and their relative weight is disputed: Hamas confiscation, taxation and resale; looting by gangs and crowds; the breakdown of order during the war; and Israeli restrictions on crossings, routes and items — including a total halt of aid from early March to late May 2025. The evidence that Hamas profits from aid is substantial. The claim that it systematically steals most aid is not established — see the evidence that cuts the other way, below.

Critics argue that international funding has in practice sustained both civilian welfare and Hamas's military and political capacity, since all resources inside Gaza pass through territory Hamas controls.