On Tuesday, the Israeli army stated that the Air Force conducted a precise strike against Hamas’s senior leadership in Qatar, with Hamas asserting that the IDF aimed at negotiators.

In Doha, the Qatari capital, several explosions occurred this afternoon. Sources indicate the attack targeted Hamas’s headquarters during a discussion on a U.S. ceasefire proposal.

Saudi media claimed that top officials, such as Khalil al-Hayya, the head of Hamas’s negotiating team, Zaher Jabarin, Khaled Mashal, Nizar Awadallah, and Mousa Abu Marzook, were in the buildings struck by Israel. 

While the conditions in the Gaza Strip worsen amid over 700 days of conflict, senior Hamas figures like Mashal and Marzook lead comfortable lives in Qatar.

Mashal, leading the group’s political bureau abroad, along with Hamas senior Marzouk, reportedly has a net worth exceeding $3 billion, as stated by the Israeli Embassy in the US.

The considerable wealth of these senior figures in the Palestinian group contrasts sharply with the dire situation in the Strip, where, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), nearly 12,000 children under five were suffering from acute malnutrition as of July.

Conditions in the territory have long been dire, with Gaza referred to by some as the world’s ‘largest open air prison’.

Even before the outbreak of war in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 terror attack on Israel, half of Palestinians living in Gaza depended on food supplied by the United Nations.

Those conditions have dramatically deteriorated since the war begun, with the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) saying more than half a million people across the Strip are facing an ‘entirely man-made’ famine leading to ‘starvation, destitution and death’.

The IPC report was condemned as an ‘outright lie’ by Israel, which has denied there is starvation in the territory and accuses Hamas of stealing aid. 

But even as the territory’s 2.3million people continue to suffer, several hundred millionaires are registered in the coastal Strip.

And while the majority of citizens in the densely populated territory – which is a quarter of the size of Greater London – languish in poverty, a select few live in marble-floored mansions and luxury hotels.

According to the Embassy of Israel in the U.S., Hamas’s annual turnover is $1billion and the group is second only to ISIS as the world’s richest terror group.

Hamas is best known for its military wing, with reports that 40,000 terrorists wear the group’s badge, thousands of whom took part in the October 7 attack. They are armed to the teeth with rifles and rockets, and have vowed to destroy Israel.

But the group is also the de facto authority that governs over Gaza, running organisations including its healthcare system, social services and the media.

It took power in 2006, with its former political leader Haniyeh assuming the role of prime minister that year. It remains in control of the territory and – having called no elections since – is essentially an authoritarian regime.

In the years since taking control, the group’s leaders have profited off the misery of the Gazan people.

In a video, the Embassy of Israel in the U.S. accused the group of using its funds for building tunnels and arming its fighters rather than building vital infrastructure such as wells and water treatment.

A study from 2021 suggested that about one-quarter of disease spread in the territory is caused by water pollution, and 12 per cent of deaths of young children are due to infections related to contaminated water.

‘While Gazans are deprived of basic needs, Hamas uses aid and funds to line their own pockets,’ the embassy said in a post on X.

Israel has also said Hamas continues to attack across the border without building civilian bomb shelters, knowing the Israeli military will retaliate.

Instead, Israel says Hamas’s leadership hoards its wealth, uses Palestinians as human shields and allows the population it claims to govern go hungry.

According to German news outlet Bild, there are several Hamas officials who have grown particularly wealthy over the years – including Mashal, Marzook, Younis Qafisheh, and the group’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who Israel assassinated in Tehran in July 2024. 

Haniyeh was believed to be the richest of the four – despite once vowing to live only on olive oil and za’atar spice.

The father of 13 children spent a lot of his time in hiding, living the high-life in luxury hotels in Qatar and Turkey.

German tabloid Bild reports that he often flew between Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow and Cairo in his private jet to meet leaders in friendly nations, and two of his sons Maaz and Abdel Salam were often seen in Instagram posts lounging on hotel beds in Istanbul or Doha.

Maaz, who is a very wealthy real estate mogul in his own right, is known on the Gaza Strip as the ‘father of houses’. When he’s in Turkey, he is often seen in the company of glamorous women and alcohol, despite his Islamic faith. 

His brother Abdel Salam, meanwhile, was disgraced after being found to be siphoning off money in his role as sports ambassador for Hamas’s ‘Shura Council’ (Politburo), Bild says.

The publication estimates his net worth to be $2.5million, while the Israeli embassy to the US suggested it was as much as $3.2billion. Another publication, i24News, wrote last month that his wealth could be as high as $5billion.

Khaled Mashal, 67, is the former chief of terrorist group’s political bureau and is now head of Hamas abroad.

He fled Damascus to escape the Arab Spring in Syria and is now living in Qatar. From there, he handles real estate and financial transactions for Hamas.

When he fled Syria, Bild reports, he is said to have taken $1.5billion from Hamas’s headquarters in Damascus. Israel’s U.S. embassy puts his net worth at $4billion.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, 72, is another Hamas high-flyer. He is considered the head of the group’s foreign relations office.

After spending 14 years in the U.S. – where he was in 1995 arrested for activities supporting terrorism and deported after two years – he moved to Jordan, then to Syria and then to Cairo in 2012.

Despite his arrest, he kept hold of his money, and Bild reported his fortune is estimated at $2billion, while the Israeli embassy to the U.S. puts it higher, at $3billion.

Younis Qafisheh, 67, is a fourth Hamas official highlighted by Bild for his immense wealth.

He is one of the terror group’s most important financial managers, and has been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2022 on account of being ‘involved in directing Hamas operations and [holding] key positions in several Hamas-controlled companies, including Sudan-based Agrogate Holding and Turkey-based Trend GYO’. 

Trend GYO, which is also on the U.S. terror watch list, reported a 2022 net profit of 57.8million Turkish lira (around two million euros).

However, according to i24News, the wealth accumulated by Hamas’s very top officials is just the tip of the iceberg.

The online outlet suggests that hundreds of Hamas leaders are sitting on millions thanks to the taxation of goods brought into the territory and through international donors, mainly from Qatar.

While some estimates of Hamas’s wealth are more conservative, there is no question the group leaders have amassed huge fortunes. 

In May 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a Hamas finance official as well as other financial facilitators.

It said: ‘Hamas’s Investment Office, whose leadership oversees this network, held assets estimated to be worth more than $500million, including companies operating in Sudan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and the United Arab Emirates.’

And according to documents obtained by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, the group has a financial empire outside of the Gaza Strip worth nearly $750million (£600million).

But how has Hamas accumulated its wealth?

On account of it being a terror group, Hamas is cut off from assistance from the likes of the United States and the European Union that both provide support to the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the West Bank.

Historically, Palestinian expats and private benefactors in the Middle East provided much of the group’s funding, in addition to some Islamic charities in the West.

Israel has in the past also allowed Qatar to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the authorities in Gaza, while other foreign aid comes through the Palestinian National Authority and United Nations aid groups.

But Hamas has also been able to raise its own revenue, taxing goods that move through a sophisticated network of tunnels that avoid the Egyptian border crossing in the south, bringing in food, medicine, fuel and cash, and also arms.

Egypt also allows for the entry of some commercial goods. As of 2021, Hamas reportedly collected upwards of $12million per month in taxes raised on Egyptian goods imported into Gaza, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). 

Today, Iran is one of Hamas’s biggest donors. The country – a sworn enemy of Israel – contributes funds, weapons and military training to the group.

According to CFR, it provides some $100million per year to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups designated as terror organisations.

Turkey has also been a backer of Hamas and a critic of Israel. Though Ankara says it only supports the political wing of the group, it has also been accused of funding Hamas’s terrorist activities through aid diverted to the group’s military wing.

Despite its accumulation of wealth, however, Hamas has avoided responsibility for building infrastructure and protecting the citizens of Gaza.

In fact, Abu Marzouk declared in 2023 that the political bureau of the terror group is not responsible for protecting the coastal strip’s civilians amid the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the territory.

‘We built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being killed in airstrikes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels,’ he said. 

Passing the buck further, he added: ‘Seventy-five per cent of the population of Gaza are refugees, and it is the UN’s responsibility to protect them.’

According to the Times of Israel, he then went on to claim that it was Israel’s obligation to provide for the needs of Gazans under the Geneva Convention.

While all the sources of Hamas’s income may remain unknown, one thing is certain: the group will not be diverting its funds to help the civilians of Gaza, who with each passing day are slipping deeper and deeper into a humanitarian crisis.