US, Britain target Hamas financing with new sanctions

(AFP) — The United States and Britain on Tuesday announced another round of sanctions on Hamas over last month’s attack on Israel, again targeting the group’s Iranian backers.

The measures target “key Hamas officials and the mechanisms by which Iran provides support to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” another militant group operating in the Gaza Strip, the US Treasury Department said.

A Palestinian gunmen walks past debris in the Tulkarem refugee camp, in the northern occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem after the withdrawal of the Israeli army following a military operation in the area on November 14, 2023. – Seven Palestinians were killed during the Israeli military raid on the northern city of Tulkarem, the health ministry and a local hospital said while witnesses reported clashes in the area and a large deployment of Israeli soldiers seeking to make arrests. (Photo by Jaafar ASHTIYEH / AFP)

The United States has been ratcheting up the pressure on Hamas since the October 7 attacks, when the group’s fighters surged through the heavily militarized Gaza border and killed 1,200 people — mostly civilians, according to Israel’s tally.

“Iran’s support, primarily through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, enables Hamas and PIJ’s terrorist activities, including through the transfer of funds and the provision of both weapons and operational training,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Those targeted by the sanctions include Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s representative to Iran, Nasser Abu Sharif, as well as a Lebanon-based money exchange, Nabil Chouman & Co, that allegedly handles transfers between Hamas and Tehran.

“The Palestinian people are victims of Hamas too. We stand in solidarity with them and will continue to support humanitarian pauses to allow significantly more lifesaving aid to reach Gaza,” new British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said.

The British sanctions, coordinated with Washington, targeted four senior Hamas leaders and two financiers.

Last month, the United States announced it was aiming to build an international coalition to target the financing of Hamas.

According to the US Treasury, the Palestinian group’s global asset holdings are estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The United States will continue to work with our partners, including the UK, to deny Hamas the ability to raise and use funds to carry out its atrocities,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

Since the Hamas attack, in which it took some 240 hostages, some 11,200 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel’s reprisal offensive, health officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip have said.