The armed conflict between Israel and Palestinians has been very tough. Israel is a country with a functional intelligence system and a powerful army, in addition to being supported by powerful countries like the United States or Canada among others. On the other hand, Hamas is an organized terrorist group controlling Gaza, which makes it difficult to continue fighting.

Despite being just a small group, they are still alive, but a war like that needs not just the strongest soldiers and a huge number of people, but it also needs a big amount of money to support the movements and the technological advances that war brings, and this is why Hamas asked its supporters for donations in Bitcoin to help support their movement.

What Is Hamas?

Hamas is the biggest group among other Islam-Palestinian groups, it is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Israel, due to the suicidal kills they made in buses. It began in 1987 after the first Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation in Gaza, on its founding act they declared to be compromised with the destruction of Israel. Today it is the biggest Palestinian group and it took control of Gaza in 2007.

Their objectives are to keep the fight with Israel with their brigades Izzedine al-Qassam and develop social welfare programs because thanks to this program, Hamas gained political power from those Palestinian who felt disappointed with the government party al Fatah. They also got the support of other countries such as Egypt, Iran, Qatar, and Syria among others. The sum of these factors resulted in the victory for Hamas in the parliamentary elections.

How Is Hamas Financing This War?

A few years ago, Hamas asked for donations to support their movement with Bitcoin, however, the amount got bigger in May which is the date when Israel and Hamas exchanged rockets. According to three blockchain analytics and CoinDesk´s analysis, the brigades received up to $100,000 in Bitcoin until now. These Bitcoins have been sent through Binance. The lastest was on June 6th and the wallet was blocked, however, as the brigade did not just use a wallet for the Bitcoin it became harder. Every time they got a donation the Bitcoins went to a different wallet which is making it hard for the companies to trace the information.

In August 2020, the DOJ accused al-Qassam brigades of money laundering, operating unlicensed money, and providing resources in support of a terrorist organization named Hamas. According to the DOJ, they have been collecting the money since 2019 using an account in Coinbase, then they have been moving them to a non-custodial wallet until they got a more sophisticated software that can generate several unique addresses. Hamas has been asking for donations via Twitter and its official website ever since.

For the donations, Hamas has been using several accounts, and before May the amount was not so high, but in May the number of the transactions changed resulting in over $80,000 in Bitcoin received by Hamas. Before the last conflict, the amounts received in total were not over $40,000, making the last transaction close to the double of Bitcoins collected since 2019.

The way of making the donations was shared by the Palestinian groups with the instructions of “How to support the Palestinian resistance via Bitcoin” in a two-minute-long video with English subtitles, “Use a public device so that the wallet is not linked to your IP address”, it says.

Elliptic is a company that uses the database of information linking digital addresses to exchanges, proscribed groups, and dark web marketplaces for tracing cryptocurrencies. This company monitored and tried to trace the addresses to later identify the transactions that sent funds to a major Asian cryptocurrency exchange. As a result, they identified 13 transactions from a separate exchange, and also from Asia.

The war keeps moving and the incidents keep happening, thanks to these donations, the Palestinian group has survived until now. The companies are trying to make the best possible efforts for tracking the transactions and freezing the money to stop the al-Qassam brigade, but it seems like they always find a way to keep being financed; however, they won't be able to do it forever. Some of the way how to buy crypto could be found here https://ocryptocanada.ca/best/canadian-crypto-exchanges/