Pro-Hamas protesters outside the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. Photo: Ron Sachs via Reuters Connect

While Israel continues to let humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, members of the terror organization Hamas continue to steal the aid in order to both resupply for their terror war, and to sell it at exorbitant prices to civilians in need.

Official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV in the Gaza Strip reported that the aid convoys are being “robbed” by “the merchants of war,” who then “sell it in the market at very high prices”:

Official PA TV reporter in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza: “Many aid convoys are suffering from acts of piracy. There are robbers armed with firearms who steal the aid before it reaches the needy, and they take control of it …

The merchants of war [i.e., Hamas] are taking the aid and selling it in the market at very high prices, even though it is written on them that they are aid supplies not designated for sale.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA TV, Sept. 18, 2024]

In July, the Palestinian Authority celebrated its unity deal with Hamas — a dream come true for the PA. But at the same time, the PA is frustrated with its “partner.”

Throughout Hamas’ war against Israel, the PA has on the one hand wooed Hamas for partnership and applauded the terror organization for its massacre and murder of approximately 1,2000 people on Oct. 7, 2023. But the PA has also criticized Hamas for looking out for its own and Iran’s interests, thereby ignoring the welfare of Gazan civilians, as Palestinian Media Watch has documented.

And despite the unity deal, the PA’s frustration has continued.

When Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed and Hamas appointed Yahya Al-Sinwar as its new Political Bureau chairman, an editorial in the official PA daily strongly criticized Al-Sinwar and Hamas for only having their own interests at heart and not “the Gaza Strip with its residents, homes, structures, streets, schools, and hospitals”:

Apparently the structural skeleton of the Hamas Movement is immeasurably more important than the structural skeleton of the Gaza Strip with its residents, homes, structures, streets, schools, and hospitals.

This was revealed in the Islamic Jihad Movement’s congratulations to Hamas on selecting Yahya Al-Sinwar as its Political Bureau chairman. The congratulations described this selection as “a strong message to the Zionist enemy,'” and it said that “Hamas is still strong and united,” and that “the enemy has not harmed its structural skeleton one bit”!

…

Hamas does not intend to locate itself outside of the tunnels. It will continue to hold onto ‘the [Al-Aqsa] Flood’ ]Hamas’ name for its terror war against Israel] as its central decision …

Let us be clearer and more honest — and this is in Allah’s hands — which of the two is more important: The people’s structural skeleton, their status, their infrastructures, their life paths, or the [political] party’s structural skeleton? …

What is the resistance’s [Hamas’] criterion of an achievement — that its structural skeleton will be whole and intact, while the structural skeleton of its public is crushed?” [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, Aug. 8, 2024]

Likewise, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash has accused Hamas of being selfish, having launched the 2023 Gaza war “to make gains for Hamas and Hamas’ allies”:

Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “I have no doubt and I have had no doubt that these goals that were declared [by Hamas] are not the real goals behind the war, and they are not the real goals behind what Hamas carried out on Oct. 7, [2023]

Everyone knows what the real goals are, including us, including the Arab states that knew the real goals. The real goals were to make gains for Hamas and Hamas’ allies.” [emphasis added]

[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, July 17, 2024]

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.