Special to WorldTribune.com

TEL AVIV — The Hamas regime is said to have lost the financial support of its major Middle East backers.

Military sources said Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip no longer benefit from the hundreds of millions of dollars from such allies as Iran and Qatar.

The sources said the two Middle East states have reduced their allocation and transferred much of it through the exiled Hamas leadership.

“The golden days of Islamic support for Hamas have ended, and despite promises, the money is much less than before,” a source said.

The sources said the peak of Iranian financial support for Hamas was in 2011, when Teheran was believed to have relayed up to $400 million to the Gaza Strip. Since then, Qatar promised and failed to replace Iran, which reduced funding to an estimated $100 million a year.

“Iran has told Hamas it has no money, but the underlying message is that Hamas must first carry out Teheran’s policy before funding returns to former levels,” the source said.

The sources said the sharp decline in Iranian funds was exacerbated
by the loss of the lucrative smuggling trade from Egypt to the Gaza Strip.
They said the Egyptian military has destroyed at least 90 percent of the
estimated 1,200 tunnels, reducing the flow of goods from Egypt to a trickle.

In a briefing on Jan. 30, an officer from the army’s Southern Command
said the annual smuggling trade overseen by Hamas reached $200 million by
2013. But over the last year, the senior officer said, the Egyptian blockade
reduced revenues to several million dollars.

“The goods from Gaza focused on weapons, but also included food and
fuel, priced much lower than those now obtained from Israel,” the officer
said.

Hamas has acknowledged the virtual end of the tunnel smuggling trade.
The Islamic regime, unable to pay full salaries to its nearly
50,000 civil servants for the fourth straight month, said the flow of goods
through the tunnels dropped by 95 percent in 2013.

Israeli military sources said Hamas has sought to reconcile with Iran,
which led to an increase in funding. But they said the amount of money
relayed by Teheran was much less than in its heyday.

The economic crisis in the Gaza Strip has sparked tension between Hamas
and Palestinian militias. The sources said the militias, particularly the
Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad, were firing rockets into Israel to provoke
a crisis.

“Jihad has received far more money while Hamas can’t pay its members,”
the source said. “We have to assume that any Jihad rocket fire comes upon
orders from Teheran.”

  ‘Golden days’ over for Hamas as cash flow from Iran, Gaza Strip, Islamic Jihad, Qatar dries up, smuggling tunnels