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US authorities have imposed sanctions on 10 Hamas-linked individuals and entities in an effort to crack down on sources of funding supporting the Palestinian militant group amid the escalating conflict with Israel.
The US Treasury on Wednesday placed sanctions on six Hamas members managing assets in a secret investment portfolio. Actions were also taken against two senior Hamas officials — one of the group’s commanders, as well as a Qatar-based “financial facilitator with close ties to the Iranian regime”.
The department also imposed sanctions on Buy Cash, a Gaza-based virtual currency exchange, as well as its operator. The platform, which could not be reached for comment, offers money transfer and crypto services including bitcoin.
“The United States is taking swift and decisive action to target Hamas’s financiers and facilitators following its brutal and unconscionable massacre of Israeli civilians, including children,” Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement, adding that the department would “not hesitate” to use its tools to disrupt the group’s financing.
“That includes by imposing sanctions and coordinating with allies and partners to track, freeze, and seize any Hamas-related assets in their jurisdictions,” Yellen said.
The sanctions-hit parties are based in Gaza, Sudan, Turkey, Algeria and Qatar.
While Hamas receives significant financial support from Iran, it also generates revenue via a secret investment portfolio involving assets across jurisdictions including Sudan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates that are estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, said Wally Adeyemo, deputy Treasury secretary.
This portfolio, which has triggered previous US sanctions, has “allowed Hamas senior officials to live in luxury including elsewhere in the Middle East, while ordinary Palestinians in Gaza face harsh living conditions and dire economic prospects”, he said.
Senior Treasury officials will travel to the region “in the coming days” to continue working with partners that have shed light into Hamas’s “financial underbelly”, Adeyemo said. Officials will then visit Europe to talk to allies about cutting off Hamas’s access to euros as well as dollars, according to a senior Treasury official.
Adeyemo said steps to disrupt terrorist financing could be taken “while continuing to have legitimate humanitarian assistance flow to the region”.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Wednesday’s sanctions were directed at Hamas and its support network, not Palestinians.
“Hamas alone is responsible for the carnage its militants have inflicted on the people of Israel, and it should immediately release all hostages in its custody,” he said in a statement. “The United States will not relent in using all the tools at our disposal to disrupt Hamas terrorist activity.”
The sanctions come as US president Joe Biden travelled to Israel in an effort to express solidarity for the country, stop the conflict from expanding in the region and help facilitate humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip.
The Biden administration is facing growing political pressure to disrupt Hamas’s financing. Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren alongside more than 100 bipartisan lawmakers on Tuesday sent a letter to the White House and Treasury following reports of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad raising millions of dollars via cryptocurrencies ahead of the attack on Israel on October 7.
The lawmakers urged swift action “to meaningfully curtail illicit crypto activity and protect our national security and that of our allies”.
The Treasury and the White House did not respond to a request for comment on the letter.
Additional reporting by James Politi in Washington
