US keeps corona aid out of Hamas’ hands

The U.S. won’t send funds to the Gaza Strip in an effort to prevent Hamas from using coronavirus aid for terror-related purposes.

By Ebin Sandler, World Israel News Staff

Days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that the U.S. is sending $5 million dollars of coronavirus aid to the Palestinians, a senior official in the Trump administration clarified that no funds will be distributed to the Gaza Strip.

“There is a Hamas government in Gaza,” said the unnamed official, who spoke to the New York Post. “[And] they have indicated no interest in engaging with us, no interest in peace with Israel and in fact they continue — despite having coronavirus cases in Gaza — to fire rockets at the Israelis on a regular basis,” the official added.

The Palestinian aid is being distributed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is actively working to keep the coronavirus funds out of the hands of the Hamas terror group, the Post reported.

Last Wednesday, Pompeo addressed the issue of Palestinian coronavirus aid during a press briefing session at the State Department. (PA)

“We hope [the aid] will get to the right places,” said Pompeo. “The reason we stopped providing assistance previously is that these resources weren’t getting to the Palestinian people.”

Pompeo added, “We’ll evaluate whether these resources worked, [and] actually got to the Palestinian people.”

While the aid in Judea and Samaria is being entrusted to a contractor who is disbursing funds, USAID has so far been unable to secure a trustworthy counterpart in the Gaza Strip.

Since 2014, Hamas has received over $1 billion in aid from Qatar, while Iran supplies the terror group with about $30 million a month. Both Iran and Hamas are committed to Israel’s destruction.

According to statistics compiled by watchdog group NGO Monitor, Hamas spends on average $100 million a year on “terror infrastructure,” $40 million of which it allocates to digging cross-border tunnels that the group hopes to use for attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Hamas also diverts building materials that enter Gaza from Israel, a significant portion of which do not reach construction companies because the terror group uses the materials to build attack tunnels.

Similar to the Palestinian Authority (PA), Hamas provides salaries to those who commit violent terror attacks against Israelis and pays stipends to family members of Palestinians killed while committing terror-related crimes.

The Trump administration has slashed aid to the PA over this practice, which violates a U.S. law called the Taylor Force Act.